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4 had ™ r . 4, 
: pire : 


ae te fe 


bra 





The History of Civilization 
Edited by C. K. Ocpen, M.A. 


Travel and Travellers of the 


Middle Ages 


The History of Civilization 


In the Section of this Series devoted to PRR-HISTORY AND ANTIQUITY are 
included the following volumes :— 


I. Introduction and Pre-History 


*SOCIAL ORGANIZATION . ; ; : : : W.H. R, Rivers 
THE FarTH BeroreE History : : : ; ‘ FE, Perrier 
PREHISTORIC MAN . : : ; ; : : . J. de Morgan 
LANGUAGE: A LINGUISTIC INTRODUCTION TO HisToRY . J. Vendryes 
A GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION To HISTORY. . : L. Febvre 
RACE AND HISTORY : : : ; é ; . FE, Pittard 
FrRoM CLAN TO EMPIRE ; ; : 3 ; ; A. Moret 

*\WOMAN’S PLACE IN SIMPLE SOCIETIES : : . J. L. Myres 

*CYCLES IN HISTORY : ; , ; ‘ ci) Jala res 

“THE DIFFUSION OF CULTURE . ; = : ; . G, Elliot Smith 

*THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS . ‘ : : : D. A, Mackenzie 

*THE DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION . ; ni  UVSeG. Childe 

*THE ARYANS : ; : : ‘ : : Ve Ge Cinlge 

II. The Early Empires 
THE NILE AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. : : : A. Moret 

*COLOUR SYMBOLISM OF ANCIENT EGyrT . : ; D. A. Mackenzie 
MESOPOTAMIA : : : ‘ ; d ; . L, Delaporte 
THE AZGEAN CIVILIZATION 5 : : ‘ ; : G. Glotz 


In the Section of this Series devoted to CHRISTIANITY AND THE MIDDLE 
Aces are included the following volumes :— 


VI. Social and Economic Evolution 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL AND TOWN LIFE : : G, Bourgin 
MARITIME TRADE AND THE MERCHANT GILDs ; P. Boissonnade 
*LIFE AND WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES : 7 P. Boissonnade 
*THE Lire OF WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL TIMES . ; Eileen Power 


*TRAVEL AND TRAVELLERS OF THE MippLE Aces. (Ed.) A. P. Newton 


* An asterisk indicates that the volume does not form part of the French collection 
‘*L’Evolution de l’ Humanité,”’ 


A full list of the Series will be found at the end of this volume. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive _ 
in 2022 with funding from | 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/traveltravellersOOnewt 


septime figura. 
apontes ferait.riiit capirujog plariby alife pro binifiorie terre in tres partes. ( 
icer pro diftincrione merie ec qooradem Flaming at trgtohs bic gis erempli pofro 
gan quis porticalsrior piftinctio meioré figura requinic. ere mediterranea exit ab 
eceano per Hrictum meat rirca bifpania prope gates . AD are vercyubed trie 
aboceano Circe medi crigtisg meridict i eft verfus merldié circe media orittie aad 
Vetttis A coles litore Vis in ano terminus indict ocean nevfgetione stuingicur. 
Sore fepterrioar. 


~_Pptorti Bripdt 


dlista bfppo Cintas | grins. “Regio mhabi * 
1§ mfcgobicstSeo4t “Rocheuis tebit potter elgoré 
falesotiné=4 A pSt bic oud. AW6tee riptei 





















Fo Lgerie yg boi, @pxad ea ; oo, >. 
ry s Roma za Gilide —_y5ce0 arene “Pe < 
a, ’ oe Eurand "Roos Brs3 2 Armenio 4 a 
a eel ao 
Caw medismancdt@ ed Bleraorie ] mm Zoo 3 ; 
Yh, 2 £2 blatolt eurepaeb affrice ‘Libla eg 3 5 fl ta Ye y = ma 
iy” .s BD & Larcago | pad pofpen Se SO 
ry : tens cancrr Sia 
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Eiptrics Gara Trogovice Dubio ee, 
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32a P . 
as 3. rape SAGE pte tre bebite 
RS dtinetsd fy merivié fe ercz 


EGnoc | cialis 


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Stings Vt ex Dilkofiforsuteticis 5 pertum ctf a 


Cropicas capricornt 


Ctrelue-! Itarticg 


polvs auftralis. 
THE HABITABLE WORLD ACCORDING TO CARDINAL PIERRE D’AILLY, 1410. 


Seventh Figure. 


This figure serves the xiiijth chapter and many others for the division of the earth into three parts and 
likewise for the distinguishing of the sea and of certain rivers and regions here set down by way of example 
because more particular distinction requires a larger figure. The Mediterranean Sea goes out from the 
ocean by the narrow strait of Hercules round Spain near Gades. The Red Sea indeed goes out from 
the ocean about the middle of the south-east, that is towards the south about midway between east and 
west. By the shore of which [sea] the end of the Indian ocean is scarcely reached in a year’s Sailing. 


Polus Septentrionalis 


Yperborei | Arumphi 


COI SITICIS O1 Arctic 








Gi rcle Hegion uninhabitable 






ho, y ebicapeds Jowards the 

fe contain many awellind- é 

Vaces in the saltsea hick ¥ R U t h @nid on account of the cokd, 
cannothere be contained. Ru phea n Mountain s 









Francia 


Liguria 





q Mediterranean Sea unto Asia 
f and divides Lurope trom Aftrica 
















Cartago 


AFFRICA 














Esperides Gara- Trogoditae N UL PSTP 7; 
oO welling place 
It MonsAthlas -montes Ethiopia Meroe 5 Ce sys nats 
Bae 5 
> Na N < R Jadia contains nearly a third part of the 
S 8 Lee habitable land and extends towards the south 


Equinoctialis 
The Anti-chimate towards the fquator and beyond contains go 


mary dwelling-places as appears trom authenhe histories 


Tropicus Capricorni 


Antarctic Circle 


Polus Australis 


\ OF PRixa 
<u “75 






Bs OCT 9- 1928 
We < 
Logica gw 


Travel and Travellers 
of the Middle Ages 


Edited by 


ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON 
Dig, LAT eee) Becks 
Rhodes Professor of Imperial History tn the University of London 





NEW YORK 
ALFRED A. KNOPF 
1926 


Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Hertford. 








CONTENTS 


PREFACE 
CHAP. 
I. InTRODUCTION—THE CONCEPTION OF THE 


WorLD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
By Professor Arthur Percival Newton: 
M.A,, D.Lit., B.Se., F.S.A., Rhodes 
Professor of Tinperial History in the 
University of London 
II. Tur Decay oF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 
AND THE DECLINE OF EXPLORATION, 
A.D. 800-500 
By M. L. W. Paenten M.A., Bebtessh 
of Ancient History in Cornell Dinigersttes 
N.Y., lately Reader in Ancient History 
in the University of London 
III. Curist1AaN PILGRIMAGES, A.D. 500-800 
By the Rev. Claude Jenkins, D.D., 
F.S.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History, King’s College, London ; 
Lambeth Librarian 
IV. THE VIKING AGE 
By Professor Alan Mae er. .M. ne mak 
fessor of English Language and Slivitel ares 
in the University of Liverpool 


V. ARAB ‘TRAVELLERS AND #£IMERCHANTS, 
A.D. 1000-1500 
By Sir T. W. Arnold, C. i E., Litt, D., 
Professor of Arabic in the University of 
London 
VI. TRADE AND COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN 
EUROPE, A.D. 800—1200 
By Baron A. F. Meyendorff, hevaer 
in Russian Laws and Institutions in the 
University of London 


PAGE 


19 


89 


70 


88 


104 


v1 CONTENTS 

CHAP. 

VII. Tue OPENING OF THE LAND ROUTES TO 
CATHAY : : : : ; 

By Eileen Power, M.A., D.Lit., 

Reader in Medieval Economic History 

in the University of London 


VIII. (i) ‘“ TRAVELLERS’ TALES ” oF WONDER AND 
IMAGINATION 
(ii) EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN 


THE MIDDLE AGES : ; , 
By Professor Arthur Percival Newton 


IX. PresTER JOHN AND THE EMPIRE OF 
ETHIOPIA , : ; Arey 
By Sir E. Denison Ross, C.I.E., Ph.D., 
Professor of Persian in the University 
of London, Director of the School of 

Oriental Studies 


X. THE SEARCH FOR THE SEA Route To INDIA 


By Professor Edgar Prestage, D.Litt., 
Camoens Professor of Portuguese in the 
University of London 


INDEX 


PAGE 


124 


159 


174 


195 


217 


His oOP LECUS ERATIONS 


The Habitable World sae si to Cardinal Pierre 


d’Ailly, 1410 ; 2 . Frontispiece 
The Gokstad Ship : é to face page 76 
Trade Routes and Travellers’ Journeys between 

Europe and Cathay (1245-1345) 128 
Hulagu, Conqueror of tear and first Ilkhan of 

Persia . : : E 138 
Prester John, Lord of Greater India and Ethiopia 178 
Altar Piece of Nuno Gongalvez in the Cathedral of 

Lisbon, I ; ; : . $ : 200 
Altar Piece of Nuno Gongalvez in the Cathedral of 

Lisbon, IT PAN Gel 





PREEACE 


HE substance of the contributions here collected was 
comprised in a course of Public Lectures in the Depart- 
ments of History and Geography in King’s College, 
London, delivered in the Lent Term of 1925. Several 
of the contributions have been re-written and amplified 
with material that could not be included in the lectures, 
and I have added an entirely fresh chapter, but the book 
does not profess to be a complete survey of the fascinating 
field of which it treats. Those who are moved to explore 
further by the glimpses that alone are here revealed must 
betake themselves to the authorities that are mentioned in our 
footnotes and especially to the scholarly pages of Professor 
C. R. Beazley, Sir Henry Yule, M. Henri Cordier, and 
M. Ch. Schéfer. There they will find the full apparatus of maps 
and documents wherewith alone can justice be done to the 
ideas and achievements of medieval geographers. This 
brief conspectus of certain aspects of the subject may, how- 
ever, be of interest to the general reader, summarizing as it 
does some of the more recent work done in the field, and it 
will be of value to the increasing number of students in 
English and American universities who, as a part of their 
geographical courses, are concerning themselves with the 
history of travel. 

My warm thanks are due to the collaborators who have 
accepted so kindly my suggestions of subjects for treat- 
ment, and have facilitated my task in every way. For the 
planning and arrangement of the book I alone must accept 
responsibility. 

ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON. 


UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 
Kina@’s COLLEGE. 
3rd December, 1925. 





CHAPTER I 


INTRODUCTION : THE CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD IN THE 
MIDDLE AGES 


By Professor ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON, M.A., D.Lir., B.Sc., F.S.A. 


Oita essays here collected have been arranged to show 
something of the way in which the men of the Latin 
West—-in the course of a thousand years—gradually modified 
their conceptions of the physical world in which they lived. 
These conceptions differed widely from those of the Ancients, 
though they derivead many of their components from the 
ideas of Classical times. They also differed from those formed 
on a wider base of knowledge in subsequent centuries, but 
they have contributed much to our everyday phraseology 
and to the imagery of our poets. While rejecting the ideas 
of medieval men, we have kept their names and phrases. 
Many of them are very persistent, but they have quite changed 
their meaning. At one time they were accurate descriptions 
of what men thought about the world, and might form the 
basis of argument. To-day they are mere poetic figures. 

The contributions are arranged in roughly chronological 
order, and each discusses in some detail the concepts of the 
world and the conditions of travel and exploration of a 
particular period or associated with particular sources of ideas 
which have made material additions to the development 
of thought and knowledge. 

The thousand years between the break-up of the ancient 
world and the period of the great discoveries of the late 
fifteenth and early sixteenth century falls in this, as in 
many other respects, into three main periods. The first 
stretches from the sixth to the eleventh century and 
is marked by the loss of the ancient scientific concepts 
of the world and their replacement by uncritical cosmogonies, 
based largely upon the crude ideas of the Hebrews as set 
out in the Scriptures. It can hardly be claimed that in this 
period there was any conception of the world generally held 

B 


2 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


among educated and thinking men. Almost every writer 
who deals with cosmogony interprets the Scriptural phrases 
in his own way, and only the very ablest, like the Venerable 
Bede, who still were familiar with the remains of ancient 
learning, give us anything that remotely corresponds with 
reality. The second period includes the time from about 
A.D. 1000 to the beginning of the fourteenth century. It 
is the period of the Crusades, a time of rapid development 
in the realm of ideas and of critical power, as well as in 
material achievement. Men are no longer wholly dependent 
for their conceptions upon the Scriptures and a trickle of little 
understood survivals from the ancients. They can drink 
at the founts of Greek and Roman knowledge through new 
channels. Arabic thought and learning greatly influence 
them. Immense results flowed thence, and the time is 
marked not only by great advance in the sphere of thought 
and scientific criticism, but also by a large extension of ex- 
ploration and a growth in practical knowledge of the land- 
mass of Eurasia such as had never been possessed even in 
ancient times. Alongside, but flowing in a separate stream, 
were the achievements of the men of the North. Their 
practical accomplishment was astonishing, but its influence 
upon the development of European thought was compara- 
tively slight and indirect. It was not until a very much later 
age that the travels of the Vikings became known throughout 
Western Europe, and their story is rather an appendix 
to our main theme than an integral part of it. 

The third and culminating period of the Middle Age 
includes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a period 
of great practical achievement. It was marked not only 
by a more systematic shaping of the typical medieval ideas, 
but also by immense improvements in navigation and the 
means of maritime exploration. These two lines of develop- 
ment, the theoretical and the practical, gradually approached 
one another, and the second absorbed or replaced the first. 

For the earlier Middle Ages down to the middle of the 
thirteenth century material is comparatively scanty, but 
from thence onwards we have geographical treatises of a 
detailed and scholarly character, and we can summarize the 
ideas of the time with much more certainty. Possibly 
it was only in the period between the time of Roger 


INTRODUCTION 3 


Bacon (c. 1270) and the recovery of Ptolemy’s geographical 
work in the first half of the fifteenth century that 
there was formulated a conception of the world that 
was generally acceptable to educated men. The medieval 
point of view can thus be seen best in the ideas of the 
fourteenth century, for after its close other ideas came 
rapidly surging in, partly as has been said, from the results 
of exploration and partly from the recovery of the ancient 
learning and the rise of a new critical spirit, brought about in 
the geographical sphere especially by the study of the 
writings of Ptolemy. 

Each of these three periods will be taken up in turn, and 
we shall endeavour to deal with the principal travels and 
travellers of the time, the motives that inspired and the 
circumstances that controlled them. Men in all ages are 
the creatures of their ideas, and it seems fitting, therefore, 
before entering upon the more detailed studies of our later 
chapters, to trace in outline some of the beliefs as to the 
nature of the world in which they lived that were familiar 
to the minds of the travellers of the Middle Age. Those 
beliefs pointed out the goals for which they sought, guided 
the direction they took, and coloured all their observations 
on the way. Hence, to understand aright the descriptions 
of travels that they penned, we should know something 
of the preconceptions with which they started. 

The culminating work of ancient geography was that 
written in Greek about A.p. 150 by the Egyptian astronomer, 
Claudius Ptolomceus. By reason of his access to the stores 
of learning preserved in the great library of Alexandria, 
he was able to summarize in an orderly and complete way 
the work of earlier scientific thinkers like Huipparchus, 
Eratosthenes, and Marinus of Tyre. His point of view was 
that of a mathematician and his treatment orderly and 
systematic. His main work was devoted to Astronomy, and 
is contained in a book that had great influence on Arabic 
thought and is still known by the names the Arabs gave it, 
Almagest. His Geography, however, is not solely confined 
to the mathematical side of the subject, but is also descriptive, 
and it was provided with scientifically constructed maps 
which gave an elaborate picture of the world as known to 
the Greeks. For this work he was able to collect much 


A TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


information from the traders and travellers who came to 
Alexandria, then the greatest commercial centre of the world. 
Ptolemy’s Almagest was fairly well known to the thinkers 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through Arabic 
versions, but his Geography was comparatively little known. 
It was not until it was translated into Latin about a.p. 1410 
that it began to exercise a gradually preponderating influence 
upon geographical thought. The Middle Ages knew little 
Greek, but in the fifteenth century this defect was remedied. 
Ptolemy’s Geography, which was at first circulated in poor Latin 
translations, but by 1478, when a magnificent edition was 
published at Rome with fine maps, it had become familiar 
to scholars. It was printed in Greek in 1533. Between 
1410 and 1478, therefore, the ancient view of the 
world was revived, and profoundly modified the medieval 
concepts and rapidly displaced them. The next half century 
(1478=1528) saw increasing attempts to fit the facts of the 
new oceanic discoveries of the sailors into the scientific 
Ptolemaic framework, but ultimately it was realized that 
the task was impossible. Ptolemy’s system was bit by bit 
abandoned, and the field was left for the modern conceptions 
and the work of geographers and cartographers like Gerhard 
Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, who used cartographical 
apparatus and drew maps which differ little in essentials 
from those in use to-day. 

The geographical Renaissance may be dated roughly as 
beginning, therefore, in the decade 1410-20, which also saw 
the beginning of the first systematic efforts of the Portuguese 
towards oceanic exploration. But the old ideas were 
not abruptly abandoned. They were gradually modified 
to fit the new knowledge, and many even of the greatest 
discoverers, and above all Christopher Columbus, thought of 
their work in a medieval way and sought in vain for the 
fabulous wonders that had filled so many of the pages of 
writers of earlier generations. 

From the knowledge of the early Middle Ages true views of 
the shape of the earth had almost disappeared and had given 
place to fanciful ideas of symmetry based upon the specula- 
tions of Hebrew poets. The systematic thought of the great 
writers of antiquity was almost forgotten, and only the 
fables and marvels of compilers like Solinus (8rd ec. A.D.) 


INTRODUCTION 5 


remained in circulation. We may take as an example one 
of the BEatTus maps, so called from having been attached 
to a Commentary on the Apocalypse written by the Spanish 
priest Beatus at the end of the eighth century. The map he 
drew was intended to portray the spread of the Christian 
faith, as the kingdom of heaven is likened in the Gospel to a 
field sown with seed. The typical Beatus map contains a 
series of pictures of the Twelve Apostles, each in that part 
of the world where he is traditionally said to have preached. 
Jerusalem with St. James does not occupy the centre of the 
map, but Adam and Eve and the serpent are shown in a 
vignette at the top, which marks the East. The whole is 
surrounded by the ocean with pictures of fishes and some- 
times row-boats. 

But much sounder ideas of cosmogony than these were 
held by the leading thinkers of the time, the outstanding 
example of whom is the Venerable Bede in the early 
eighth century who, familiar as he was with many of 
the best writings of antiquity, still held fast to the ancient 
idea of a spherical globe. Much more cosmographical 
writing has been usually attributed to Bede than is 
now accepted as genuine by his editors. But there are 
certain passages in the authentic treatise De Natura Rerum 
which exhibit clearly his views of cosmogony. He tells 
us that the world is divided into five zones which are 
distinguished by differences of temperature, and herein he 
closely follows the system of the late Latin cosmographer 
Macrobius, whose influence was widely spread for many 
centuries :— 

‘* The first is the northern, uninhabitable by reason of cold 
and whose stars never set for us. The second is the solstitial 
or summer zone, which is habitable and temperate ; the third 
the equinoctial covered by the burning orb of the sun, torrid 
and uninhabitable. The fourth zone is the brumal or 
winter zone (brumalis) on the lower side turned towards the 
southern pole, temperate and habitable. The fifth is the 
austral zone around the southern turning point (verticem), 
which is covered with land and is uninhabitable by reason 
of the cold. But the three middle zones are distinguished 
by inequalities of their seasons ; when the sun holds the first at 
the summer solstice, the second at the equinox, and the third 
in winter. The two extreme zones are always without the 


6 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


sun. Wherefore from the island of Thule with one day’s 
sailing to the north the frozen sea is reached.”’1 In his 
De Temporum Ratione, a work relating to the astronomical 
calendar and undoubtedly genuine, Bede again touches 
on cosmogony and discusses the Antipodes, where he strongly 
denies that beings like ourselves can exist. 

But other professedly scientific works have been ascribed to 
the historian that are now shown to be two or three centuries 
later in date, and it is from these credulous productions 
that what have been thought to be Bede’s cosmogonical beliefs 
have usually been quoted, thus doing him serious injustice. 
The first of these, De EHlementis Philosophie, possibly 
written by William de Conches about a.p. 1100, has been 
cited even by so erudite a scholar as the Visconde de Santarem ? 
as exemplifying Bede’s geographical ideas, though it commits 
itself to an elaborate symmetry of inventive detail that \ ould 
be impossible for the rational thinking of the great scholar. 
An extract is worth quotation as showing something of 
medieval methods of geographical reasoning :— 

“The earth is an element placed at the middle of the 
world ; it is at its middle as the yolk is in the egg ; about it 
there is water, as about the yolk there is the white. About 
the water the air like the skin containing the white of the egg. 
The earth is thus placed in the middle of the world and 
receives thence all heavy things, and although naturally 
it is congealed and dry in its divers parts, it comprises many 
different qualities by reason of happenings beyond itself. 
For the part that is subjected to the burning part of the air 
is torrid from the burning heat of the sun and inhabitable ; 
but the ends are frozen by reason of the two cold parts [of 
the air] and are uninhabitable, though the part subjected 
to the temperate part of the air is temperate and habitable. 
Since, as we have said before, there are two parts of this tem- 
perate sort, there are two parts of the earth that are temperate 
and suitable for habitation, one on this side of the torrid 
zone, the other on the further side. But although both are 
habitable yet we believe that only one of them is habited 
by men and even that not wholly. But philosophers make 


1 De Natura Rerum, cap. ix, Works (ed. Smith), vol. vi, p. 103. 
2 Barros e Sousa, Visconde de Santarem, Essai sur l’histoive de la 
cosmographie, i, 25. 


INTRODUCTION 7 


mention of the inhabitants of both not because they are there, 
but because they say that they might be.” 

In another work, possibly a little later than Bede’s time but 
falsely attributed to him, De mundi celestis terrae que con- 
stitutione, similar ideas are set forth, and it is implied that 
though there may be habitable regions beyond the torrid 
zone, yet their inhabitants, the Antichthones, cannot reach 
us and we cannot reach them. Again, the legend attached 
to a celebrated Turin map of the eleventh century describes 
a circumfluent ocean surrounding the torrid zone and says: 
** The ocean surrounding the coasts of the land almost at the 
height of the horizon divides it into two parts, of which we 
inhabit the upper and our antipodes the other, nevertheless 
none of us can come to them nor none of them to us.” 

The most noticeable thing in these speculations and, 
perhaps, the most disconcerting to those who have thought 
of the men of the Middle Ages as believers in a flat earth, is 
that there is not a hint of such an idea. Its globular 
character is entirely accepted. 

A typical scholar of the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen, 
who was canon and master of the school of the great cathedral 
there between 1060 and 1076, has left works of the greatest 
value for the history of Northern Europe in the early Middle 
Ages, but he also wrote geographical works of much interest. 
From his pages we glean the most nearly contemporary 
references to the explorations of the Vikings, and we may 
take him as fairly representing the thought of his age. 

He clearly grasped the sphericity of the earth and refers 
to the axis around which the globe revolves, but he dealt little 
with abstract ideas and mainly devoted himself to geographical 
descriptions of Northern Europe derived from travellers. 
He considered that terra firma was entirely surrounded by the 
infinite and terrible ocean, the northern part of which was 
covered with ice and darkness. The sea was stiff with salt 
and covered with ice so ancient as to be black and tindery. 
Venturous sailors like Harold Hardrada, who had sailed 
north into those seas, had found terrible whirlpools like the 
Maelstrém at the “ darkling end of the failing world”’, which 
would suck in ships and disgorge them again like some 
gigantic monster. 

1 Santarem, op. cit. i, 27. 


8 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


One of the most interesting representations of the globe 
in medieval MSS. is to be found in the Liber Floridus of 
Lambertus Audomarensis, a canon of St. Omer, written 
in 1180. The work is an encylopeedia of knowledge culled 
from many earlier authors, and it had a considerable vogue 
down to the end of the fourteenth century. Lambert 
attempts to achieve two purposes, to give a symmetrical 
conception of the whole globe, showing the relation of all its 
parts, and to describe terra firma, the world inhabited by 
man, which, according to him, fills only one quarter of the 
whole. It cannot be claimed that any of his ideas were 
original: they did not profess to be, but are in deference 
to authority derived from the ancient philosophers, and 
those recorded serve to show us the dim memories of the 
learning of old times that alone remained among the men of the 
twelfth century. In the most interesting of Lambert’s several 
mappemondes attached to the Liber Floridus, the east is at 
the top and the earth is represented as a sphere round the 
Equator of which flows a wide belt of sea. This mid-land sea 
is said to be invisible to man, for the full strength of the sun, 
*‘ going just overhead by the Milky Way, raises it to torrid 
heat,” and prevents any human being from crossing it. Terra 
firma, the great land mass of the habitable world, is thus 
divided from the Land of the Fabled Antipods, the Australian 
land, or terra australis nondum cognita. This is “‘ temperate in 
climate but unknown to the sons of Adam, having nothing 
which is related to our race. ... When we are scorched 
with heat [the Antipods] are chilled with cold; and the 
northern stars which we are permitted to discern are entirely 
hidden from them’. Many of Lambert’s imaginings, 
derived from ancient Greek science and also accepted by the 
best writers of the later Middle Ages, are not widely removed 
from reality, but he adds to them many impossible sugges- 
tions. He tells us that the Antipods have days and nights 
of equal length, and that they suffer winter twice over, 
while immediately to the south of them is a great region 
entirely uninhabitable by reason of the perpetual cold and 
darkness. 

The Terrestrial Paradise, in which are Enoch and Elias, 
is placed in a circle surrounded by rays and stars at the 
extreme east, and the antipodes of Paradise in another circle 


INTRODUCTION 9 


at the extreme west with the inscription ‘ Here live our 
antipodes, but they have a different night, and days which 
are contrary to ours, and so for the setting of the stars.” 
Lambert appears to conceive of this land of the antipodes 
as another world similar in form and size to terra firma. 

It is interesting to note how the idea of the antipodes 
appealed to the greatest of the poets of the Middle Ages. 
In the Thirty-fourth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, written at 
the beginning of the fourteenth century, Virgil carries the 
poet by a secret path to the surface of the other hemisphere 
of the earth where once more they obtain a sight of the 
stars. In reply to Dante’s inquiry of Virgil as to where they 
were :— 


“‘ [He] answering spake. Thou deemest thou art still 
On the other side the centre, where I grasp’d 
The abhorred worm that boreth through the world. 
Thou wast on the other side, so long as I 
Descended, when I turn’d, thou didst o’erpass 
That point to which from every part is dragg’d 
All heavy substance. Thou art now arrived 
Under the hemisphere opposed to that 
Which the great continent doth overspread, 
And underneath whose canopy expired 
The Man, that was born sinless and so lived. 
Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere 
Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn 
Here rises, when there evening sets: and he 
Whose shaggy pile we scaled, yet standeth fix’d, 
As at first. On this part he [i.e. Lucifer] fell down 
From heaven ; and th’ earth, here prominent before, 
Through fear of him did veil her with the sea, 
And to our hemisphere retired.” 


The Twenty-seventh Canto of the Purgatorio, too, begins 
with lines that show how Dante fully realized the sphericity 
of the earth and its effect upon differences of time in various 
parts of the world. 


‘* Now was the sun so stationed, as when 
His early radiance quivers on the heights 
Where streamed his Maker’s blood ; while Libra hangs 
Above Hesperian Ebro; and new fires 
Meridian, flush on Ganges’ yellow tide. 
So day was sinking when the angel of God 
Appear’d before us.”’ 


1 For a full analysis of the MS. of the Liber Floridus at Ghent, see 
J. P. Migne, Patrologia, vol. clxiii, pp. 1005-31. On fol. 19 of this MS. 
is the mappemonde entitled Sphera triplicata gentium mundi. Gentes 
Asiae, Europe, Africe diveyse. For a discussion of all Lambert’s maps, 
see Santarem, op. cit., li, 194, etc. 


10 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Perhaps the most numerous class of medieva] maps 
comprised those which are called from their form ‘ T-O 
maps’’. The east is placed at the top of the map, and not as 
with us on the right. The continental mass is surrounded by 
the Ocean as an O, and through the middle of the lower 
or western half of the map is drawn the Mediterranean Sea 
stretching from the Pillars of Hercules (our Strait of Gibraltar) 
to the coast of Palestine. Into the inner end of the Mediter- 
ranean flows from the south on our right hand, a greatly exag- 
gerated Nile, and from the north, on our left, a strip of water 
which represents our Black Sea, Marmora and the Aigean. 
Thus the inland seas form a rough T dividing the land 
(terra firma) into three unequal portions or continents, an 
idea that was universal in the Middle Ages and still sways 
us, though we know that it has little geographical value. 
Each continent was associated with one of the sons of Noah, 
Asia with Shem (hence our phrase ‘Semitic peoples’’), 
Africa with Ham (hence negroes are called ‘‘sons of 
Ham’’), and Europe, inhabited by men of white stock, 
with Japhet. Jerusalem is usually situated at the centre of 
the map after the Scriptural tradition, that it was a city set 
on a hill from which the Gospel light shone out to all 
mankind. 

From fanciful conceptions such as these to the critical 
and systematic speculations of the scholars of the thirteenth 
century who had a knowledge of the work of the Arab astro- 
nomers is an immense stride forward. Two of the greatest 
writers of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Roger 
Bacon, each devoted attention to geographical study, and 
in the work of each we find valuable knowledge. Each 
gave much consideration to the extent of the habitable 
regions and the nature of the Antipodes. 

Albertus Magnus in his Liber cosmographicus de natura 
locorum (written about 1260) discusses how difference in 
latitude causes a difference in climate. ‘‘ All the torrid 
zone is habitable,’ he says, ‘“‘and it is a popular error to 
believe that those whose feet are directed towards us 
must necessarily fall. The same climates are repeated in 
the lower hemisphere on the other side of the equator, and 
two races of Ethiopians exist, those of the northern tropic 
and the blacks of the southern tropic. The lower hemisphere, 


INTRODUCTION 11 


antipodal to our own, is not entirely watery ; it is in great 
part inhabited, and if the men of those far-off regions do not 
come to us, it is because of the vast seas that are set between ; 
perhaps also some magnetic power there holds back human 
flesh and blood (carnes humanas) as the magnet holds the iron. 
Besides, the peoples of the torrid zone, far from suffering in 
intelligence by reason of the heat of the climate, are very 
learned, as is proved by the books of philosophy and astronomy 
that have come to us from India.” 

Roger Bacon, who was contemporary with Albertus Magnus, 
before embarking in his Opus Majus upon an elaborate 
geographical description of the habitable world, devotes 
attention to a consideration of its extent and the possibility 
of other zones than the north temperate climate being 
habitable and inhabited. He shows that the sea necessarily 
must occupy less than three-quarters of the surface of the 
globe, although this conclusion conflicts with the ancient 
Hebrew idea as expressed in the fourth Book of Esdras (cap. vi, 
verse 42): ‘‘ Upon the third day thou didst command that 
the waters should be gathered together in the seventh part 
of the earth; six parts didst thou dry up.” In fact, he 
maintains that the eccentricity of the solar orbit is likely to 
produce even more dry land in the southern hemisphere 
than we know to exist in the mass of the northern continent. 
He explains clearly the effect of the sun’s passage along the 
ecliptic on the climates of the world, and that it is the cause 
of the long days of summer and the long nights of winter in 
Scotland and beyond it towards the Pole. He considers 
with great interest the work done by the Arabs and the 
astronomers of Alfonso X of Castile in constructing astro- 
nomical tables for the determination of latitudes and longi- 
tudes, and claims that it is desirable that such work should 
be continued, and with greater accuracy, for obtaining the 
benefits that he enumerates. ‘‘ For their place of birth is 
the principle of the generation of things,’’ and so a knowledge 
of latitude and longitude is necessary for a proper under- 
standing of man and of Nature, for the spiritual government 
of the world, and for a knowledge of the home of the lost ten 
tribes of the Jews and the place where Antichrist will arise. 

By repeated touches such as these last we can perceive how, 
despite his seeming modernity, Bacon is still a friar of the 


12 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Middle Ages, and though the maps that almost certainly 
accompanied his copy of the Opus Majus when he sent it 
to Pope Clement have not come down to us, it is very possible 
that they would not have differed much from those that were 
being drawn by his contemporaries and by succeeding 
scholars in their studies for a century more. A new class 
of maps was certainly arising for practical use among seamen 
and merchants, but they were far beneath the lofty con- 
sideration of the learned cosmographers. The gradual 
development of a realistic representation of coast-lines in 
the seamen’s charts runs a separate course and cannot here 
concern us. The scholastic conceptions of the world still 
continued to be elaborated throughout the fourteenth century 
and they received a wider circulation than ever before in the 
pages of one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. 

We shall say more of the spurious work called Mandeville’s 
Travels in a later part of this book, but here we need only 
note the views therein expressed concerning the shape of the 
earth which are contained in the twenty-first chapter. The 
book was written about 1370 and was in constant circulation 
in Western Europe throughout the fifteenth century. It 
may fairly be claimed to represent the average ideas of 
cosmogony prevailing among educated men before the 
complete recovery of Ptolemy’s work. A few extracts will 
suffice. 

‘* How the Earth and the Sea be of round form and shape, 
by proof of the star that is yclept Antartyk, that is fixed in 
the south. 

** In the land of Lamary [i.e. Sumatra] nor in many other 
beyond that no man may see the star Transmontane [i.e. 
the Pole Star] that is yclept the star of the sea, that is 
immovable, that is toward the north, that we clepe the lode- 
star. But men see another star the contrary to him, towards 
the south that is yelept Antartyk. . . . And this star that is 
toward the north that we clepe the lode-star appeareth not to 
them. For which cause men may well perceive that the land 
and the sea be of round shape and form, for the part of the 
firmament [that] sheweth in one country, sheweth not in 
another country. And men may well prove by experience 
and subtle compassment of wit that if a man found passages 
by ships that would go to search the world, men might go by 


INTRODUCTION 13 


ship all about the world above and beneath. . . . Amanmay 
environ all the earth of all the world as well under and above 
and turn again to his country that had company and shipping 
and conduct. And always he should find men, lands and 
isles as well as in this country. For we wit well that they 
that be toward the Antartyk they be straight feet against 
feet of them that dwell under the Transmontane also well as 
we and they that dwell under the Transmontane also well as 
weand they that dwell under us be feet against feet. . .. They 
have the night when we have the day, and [while] that men 
go upward to one coast, men go downward to another coast. 
But how it seemeth simple to simple men unlearned that 
men may not go under the earth, and also that men should 
fall toward the heaven from under. But that may not be 
upon less than we may fall toward heaven from the earth 
where we be. ... For if a man might fall from the earth unto 
the firmament, by greater reason the earth and the sea that 
be so great and so heavy should fall to the firmament, but 
that may not be.’’! From these very sensible observations 
the author proceeds to a demonstration of the way in which 
astronomers apply mathematical reasoning to the mapping 
of the firmament and the earth which although it is beyond 
our present purpose is of considerable interest as showing 
that the geography of educated men at the end of the four- 
teenth century was by no means so entirely fabulous as has 
sometimes been imagined. 

Before returning to Roger Bacon by an unexpected route 
it is necessary to say something of a scholar of immense 
reputation in his own day and of great influence for a century 
after. The cosmographical writings of Cardinal Pierre 
d’Ailly or Petrus de Aliaco, Archbishop of Cambrai (1330— 
1420) were almost forgotten after the great discoveries of the 
early sixteenth century, and it was not until Alexander von 
Humboldt again drew attention to them early in the nine- 
teenth that their historical importance was once more 
recognized. D’Ailly’s work relating to geographical and 
astronomical speculations and the reform of the calendar is 
contained in a series of short treatises which are bound up with 
some of the writings of Jean Gerson in the unique edition which 


1 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. P. Hamelins (Early English Text Society, 
London, 1919), vol. i, pp. 120-4. 


14 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


was printed at Louvain after 1480, but many MSS. copies of 
the treatises are extant showing how much they circulated 
in the fifteenth century. The most important treatise is 
the first in the published volume called Tractatus de Imagine 
Mundi. It was written in 1410 when d’Ailly knew the 
astronomical work of Ptolemy in his Almagest, but had not 
yet read his Geography, first translated into Latin in that 
year. Three years later in 1413 d’Ailly, having read the 
new translations, wrote another geographical work, the 
Compendium Cosmographie, especially to summarize .the 
useful things contained in Ptolemy’s Geographie Syntazis, and 
he is therefore not only the last of the medieval geographers 
before the Ptolemaic revival, but also the first of the Western 
scholars who began that revival and thus had so great an 
influence on thought. Besides these two treatises d’Ailly 
also drew a mappemonde to illustrate his geographical ideas 
and wrote a short explanatory note, the Epilogus Mappe 
Mundi, to accompany it. 

Into his general views concerning the arrangement of 
climate, and the sphericity of the earth we need not enter, 
because they very much resemble what we have already 
mentioned. His work is marked by great erudition, and not 
only are all the principal writers on geography, both Greek 
and Latin, quoted, but also many citations are given from 
Arab authors, Averroes, Hali, Alfragan, Avicenna, and so on. 
This display of wide reading is of interest, as will appear in a 
moment. Probably the most significant passages of d’Ailly’s 
writings are those in which he discusses the extent of the 
habitable globe. Some extracts from these will enable us to 
see something of his ideas of cosmogony :— 

‘* The earth is spherical,’’ he writes in the seventh chapter 
of his Imago Mundi, ‘“‘ and the Western ocean is relatively 
small. Aristotle pretends, contrary to Ptolemy, that more 
than a quarter of the whole globe is inhabited, and Averroes 
sustains the same opinion. The Stagyrite affirms also that 
the extent of sea is small between the coast of Spain in the 
West and the shores of India in the East. We are not con- 
cerned here with the actual Spain, but with the Further Spain, 
which is Africa. Seneca asserts that one can traverse that 
sea in a few days if the wind is favourable. Again, Pliny 
teaches us that ships from the Gulf of Arabia can arrive in a 


INTRODUCTION 15 


short time at Gades in the South of Spain. Whence we con- 
clude that the sea is not big enough to cover three-quarters 
of the globe. Esdras affirms in his fourth book that six 
parts of the earth are habitable and inhabited and that the 
seventh part alone is covered by the waters. The authority 
of that work has been recognized by the saints, who have made 
use of it for confirming the sacred verities. Beyond Thule, 
the last island of the Ocean, after one day’s sail the sea is 
frozen and stiff. At the Poles there live great ghosts and 
ferocious beasts, the enemies of man. Water abounds there, 
because those places are cold, and cold multiplies humours 
[or vapours].”’ 

In the forty-eighth chapter he tells us: ‘“‘ Thus the water 
runs from one Pole to the other forming a sea which extends 
between the extremity of Spain and the beginning of India, 
of small width, in such a way that the beginning of India 
comes to beyond the half of the equinoctial line [i.e. in the 
other hemisphere], a situation very near to that which the 
end of our hemisphere occupies.” 

In the forty-ninth chapter he uses another argument 
that he had borrowed from Aristotle: ‘‘ The west coast of 
Africa cannot be far removed from the east coast of India, 
for in both those countries elephants are found.” 

Now the greatest interest of these and similar extracts 
from d’Ailly is that they were of fundamental importance in 
governing the ideas of the last of the medieval travellers, 
Christopher Columbus. It has now been proved that practi- 
cally the only books on cosmogony that were familiar to him 
were two—the Imago Mundi of d’Ailly, published between 
1480 and 1487, and the Historia rerum ubique gestarum of Aineas 
Silvius (Pope Pius II), published at Venice in 1477. There 
are still preserved in the Library of the Colombine at Seville 
the original copies of these books that were used by Christopher 
and his brother Bartholomew, and their margins are filled 
from end to end with remarks and notes in their own hands. 
Bitter controversy has raged over the nature of Columbus’ 
‘* Great Enterprise ’’, and it cannot be claimed that agreement ~ 
has yet been reached, but there can be no doubt that when 
he set out upon his great voyage, and, in fact, long after, 
it was with the geographical equipment of the later Middle 
Ages. It is no paradox to include him in our survey.! 

1 See further on this point, Chapter VIII, of the concepts of that time. 


16 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


On his return from his first voyage Columbus proclaimed 
loudly that the new lands he had discovered lay not far from 
the dominions of the Great Khan, of which Marco Polo had 
told. They were a part of the India extra Gangem of the 
ancients. He called his islands las ylas indias, or more usually 
las indias, a use of the plural that is not found at an earlier 
date. The term came into common usage, and to this day 
we are committed to the error and speak of “the West 
Indies’? and ‘Red Indians’. But the best thinkers in 
Spain, and even the Catholic kings themselves, were 
incredulous, and rather believed that the Admiral had merely 
discovered another and larger group of oceanic islands like 
Madeira or the Azores. It is probable that it was only then 
that he and his brother Bartholomew began to attempt to 
support by geographical arguments the truth of their claims 
to have done more than all the celebrated captains of the 
King of Portugal. When the high hopes of the second voyage 
(September, 1493—June, 1496) faded into bitter disappoint- 
ment and no signs whatever could be found of the rich lands 
of Cipangu and Cathay, scepticism of Columbus’ theories 
deepened into certainty of their falsity. But he was 
obstinately determined to prove them true, and when he began 
his third voyage in May, 1498, he determined to sail further 
south in search of the eastern extremity of the habitable 
world. After a three months’ voyage he sighted what was 
undoubtedly continental land, and hastily sailing on to 
Hispaniola he wrote home to give his news. He was quite 
certain that the new discovery was what he had been searching 
for, India extra Gangem, a part of the old ‘ habitable world ’ 
and he therefore spoke of it by the old name as terra firma 
or in Spanish trerra ferme. The Elizabethans called it “‘ the 
Spanish Main’’. To confirm his statements to his sovereigns 
he entered, in his letter, on elaborate arguments from cosmo- 
gony that were either so fantastic or so obviously ill-digested 
that he very seriously damaged his reputation with the 
authorities. In his geographical ideas, as has been said, 
he was emphatically a man of the Middle Ages, and an 
uncritical one at that. He took his arguments ready-made 
from old-fashioned, handy compendia, but assumed an 
appearance of immense erudition by quoting passage after 
passage from classical authors, both Greek and Latin, to 


INTRODUCTION 17 


prove that the islands and mainland he had discovered 
are part of Asia. He refers incidentally to d’Ailly as an 
authority supporting his view, but he does not reveal the fact 
that almost every scrap of his classical learning is lifted 
bodily out of the Cardinal’s pages. In a later chapter 
there will be occasion to refer again to the extraordinary 
cosmogonical ideas he expressed wherever d’Ailly’s lead is 
not followed, but here we need only quote one passage. 

‘* Pliny writes that the sea and land together form a sphere,”’ 
says Columbus, “ but that the ocean forms the greatest mass 
and lies uppermost, while the earth is below and supports 
the ocean, and that the two afford a mutual support to 
each other as the kernel of a nut is confined by its shell. 
The master of scholastic history,! in commenting upon 
Genesis, says that the waters are not very extensive; and 
that although when they were first created they covered the 
earth, they were yet vaporous like a cloud, and that after- 
wards they became condensed, and occupied but a small 
space. In this notion Nicholas of Lira agrees. Aristotle says 
that the world is small and the water very limited in extent, 
and that it is easy to pass from Spain to the Indies ; and this 
is confirmed by Averroes, and by the Cardinal Pedro de 
Aliaco, who, in supporting this opinion, shows that it agrees 
with that of Seneca, and says that Aristotle had been enabled 
to gain information respecting the world by means of 
Alexander the Great, and Seneca by means of Nero, and Pliny 
through the Romans. The said Cardinal allows to these 
writers greater authority than to Ptolemy and other Greeks 
and Arabs ; and in confirmation of their opinion concerning the 
small quantity of water on the surface of the globe, and the 
limited amount of land covered by that water in comparison 
of what had been related on the authority of Ptolemy and 
his disciples, he finds a passage in the third book of Esdras, 
where that sacred writer says that of seven parts of the world 
six are uncovered, and the other is covered with water.’ 2 
This reference to d’Ailly is to the passage in the Highth 
Chapter of his T'ractatus de Imagine Mundt. 

The striking fact was first observed by Humboldt that the 


1 Petrus Comestor, author of the Historia scolastica. 
2 Select Letters of Columbus, ed. R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society), 


p- 140. 
c 


18 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Cardinal had lifted this passage bodily and almost literally 
from Roger Bacon’s treatise the Opus Majus. The 
demonstration is unmistakable and added to other evidence 
of a similar sort it shows us that the world of Columbus, who 
has long been credited in the popular view with a foremost 
position among the leaders of the MJRenaissance, was 
emphatically the world of the Middle Age. Columbus in 
1498 cribbed his views from d’Ailly who wrote in 1410, 
d’Ailly cribbed from Roger Bacon whose work dates from 
1267, Roger Bacon derives through the Arabs from the Greeks. 
The most famous of the explorers of the new age, in fact, 
drew none of his ideas directly from the newly recovered 
geographical literature of the Greeks as did the true 
Renaissance thinkers like Peter Martyr or Damian Goes. 
The discovery of a new world was accomplished not with 
Greek or modern geographical concepts but with medieval. 


CHAPTER II 


THe DeEcAY OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE 
DECLINE OF EXPLORATION, A.D. 800—500 


By M. L. W. LAIsTNER, M.A. 


| ie question may be asked how an essay with the above 

title can be justifiably included in a volume dealing with 
the travel and exploration of the Middle Ages. A cognate 
query would be, at what chronological point should the 
beginning of the medieval period be fixed? Should it be 
dated from the reign of Constantine or from the fall of the 
Western Empire in 4a.p. 476? The truth, of course, is that 
it is impossible to fix any precise point at which Antiquity 
ends and the Middle Ages begin ; the presence of such fixed 
points in examination syllabuses is, or should be, a mere con- 
vention. They certainly have no historical value, for the 
process of transition was gradual, and what may be called 
the ‘water-tight compartment’ theory of history is as 
scientific as solar myths or the postulate of the ‘noble 
savage’. But there is, it may be suggested, adequate 
justification, first for introducing the topic of this essay in a 
book devoted to medieval travel, and, second, for fixing the 
period of two centuries from a.p. 300 to 500, though it 
may be added that the dates are only very rough. It is 
impossible to understand medieval conceptions of the 
inhabited world and to realize how very limited the geographical 
knowledge of even the most cultured men in the earlier 
Middle Ages was ; impossible, too, to appreciate the full signi- 
ficance of that credulity which did not question the real 
existence immediately beyond the known parts of the earth, 
of dragons and Polyphemus-eyed men, without having assessed 
the knowledge possessed in earlier times and its gradual 
decline during the course of several centuries. And that is 
precisely the importance of our period in this connexion, 
for in it we can trace a more or less continuous deterioration 


20 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


both in the theory of geography and the practice of explora- 
tion from the glories of the Augustan and the Antonine ages. 

The first century of our era was a very important epoch 
for the history of geographical exploration, and a _ brief 
review of the evidence for that period will serve two purposes : 
it will explain how Ptolemy, writing in the second century, 
was able to enrich his work with so much new information 
and, by way of contrast, the decline both in enterprise and 
in knowledge which characterizes the period of the later 
Empire will be the more apparent. 

In the time of Nero we learn that a Roman expedition 
was Officially sent to explore the Nile above Syene (Assouan). 
According to Pliny the elder, the explorers made their way 
a long distance up country as far as N. Atthiopia, and they 
found much desolation in those parts. “It was not Roman 
arms,” he says, “‘ that made that land deserted, but AXthiopia © 
has been wasted by its wars with the Egyptians, having in 
turn ruled and been enslaved.’ ! About the same time 
Suetonius Paulinus, better known as the conqueror of 
Boadicea, was in charge of an expedition which advanced 
some little way into the interior beyond Mt. Atlas. He 
crossed an expanse of desert and reached a river called Ger, 
which may be identified with the Ghir River which flows 
down from the eastern slopes of the Atlas range towards 
Beni Abbes. Paulinus brought back information of a people 
called the Canarii who dwelt in this region and of the abun- 
dance of elephants and snakes and other wild creatures there. 
Again, an enterprising knight explored the amber route 
from Italy to the Baltic; we are not told the precise way 
followed, but only that he went by way of Carnuntum on the 
Danube, a site that lies about thirty-five miles east of the 
modern Vienna. The distance from Carnuntum to the shores 
of the Baltic was estimated at five hundred miles. Most of 
the way the route doubtless followed the valley of the Elbe, 
a highway for trade that was already in use in prehistoric 
times. Our explorer returned with large quantities of amber, 
which was prized not only as jewellery but for its supposed 
medicinal qualities. Further, there can be no doubt that 
after Agricola’s governorship of Britain (A.p. 86-95) much 
new information about our island became available. But 


1 Pliny, Nat. Hist., vi, 181. 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 3800-500 21 


perhaps the most interesting venture in this century was that 
of a certain Hippalus ; he had observed the periodicity of the 
monsoons in the Indian Ocean and he was the first to sail 
direct across that expanse of sea from Cape Fartaq in S.E. 
Arabia to the S.W. coast of India, instead of hugging the 
shores of E. Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as earlier navigators 
had been wont to do. 

It is obvious that, even if the primary object of these 
various enterprises was either military or commercial, they 
also provided the scientific inquirer with a great deal of new 
material for the study of geography and ethnography. By 
using all the information to be obtained from such sources, 
together with the material amassed by Marinus of Tyre, 
Ptolemy was enabled to compile his work in the first half of 
the second century A.D. His geographical treatise, in 
spite of many imperfections, marks the zenith of achievement 
attained by the Ancients in this field. When treating of the 
Far East, Ptolemy tells us that he derived his knowledge 
** from those that had sailed from there and had spent a long 
time in traversing those parts”’, which must mean native 
as well as Western travellers. Now, nothing illustrates the 
advance made by Ptolemy’s book upon previous geographical 
writers, as well as the faults of Ptolemy himself, better than 
the account he gives of the countries of the Far East. His 
erroneous system of longitude and latitude often leads him 
to put a wrong interpretation on information otherwise 
correct, while at times, in attempting to combine two different 
accounts, he is led into serious error. Yet he has very 
definite information about Chryse, the golden island or 
peninsula that is, undoubtedly, the modern Malaya; and yet 
more distant is the city of Kattigara, the furthest point, 
so far as he knows, reached by any merchant coming from the 
West. Kattigara has been identified with considerable 
probability as on the site of Ha-noi near the coast of Annam. 
Ha-noi was once Kiau-tchi and is referred to more than a 
thousand years after Ptolemy’s time by Marco Polo under the 
name of Caucigu. Ptolemy, however, had two accounts here 
which he has combined in such a way that he has introduced 
the Gulf of Siam twice over and, thereby getting his orienta- 
tion wrong, placed Kattigara far away in the south-east, 

4 Geog. , 2.17; 4. 


22 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


instead of to the north-east of Chryse. Ptolemy, in common 
with other ancient geographers, believed that the unknown 
land beyond ultimately joined the unknown parts of the Hast 
African coast, thus making the Indian Ocean a vast inland sea. 
Thus there can be no doubt that now and then adventurous 
Roman and Greek traders had found their way even further 
east than the mouths of the Ganges, and their general reports 
and Ptolemy’s remark already quoted suggest that natives 
of Far Eastern countries also found their way westwards, 
if not to Rome, at any rate to Syria and Egypt. 

When we turn to Africa, it is also not easy to fix precise 
limits to the knowledge acquired by the Ancients. On the 
eastern side of that Continent the coast was reasonably 
familiar as far as Cape Guardafui, but it is clear from Ptolemy 
that enterprising merchants had occasionally made their 
way much further south. He mentions several who had 
sailed from Aromata, i.e. the Somali coast, past Cape 
Guardafui, as far as Rhapta or Rhapton. This place has been 
tentatively located near the modern Pangani opposite Pemba 
island, that is to say at the northern end of what was till 
1914 German East Africa and is now the Tanganyika 
Territory. An Island, Menuthias, mentioned by the Greek 
writer, has similarly been equated with Zanzibar. If these 
identifications are correct—and they are given with all 
reserve—then these intrepid sailors reached a point some 
five degrees south of the equator. 

For the western side of Africa our information is much more 
scanty ; it is very doubtful whether any point beyond Sierra 
Leone was ever visited, and in most cases it is likely that 
traders got no further than the Arsinarian promontory, 
which is probably the same as Cape Verde. Ptolemy has 
preserved a record of another interesting expedition. In 
this case one Julius Maternus pushed on from Garama in 
the modern Fezzan, behind Tripoli, and after a four months’ 
journey reached ‘‘ Agisymba, the land of the Ethiopians, 
where the rhinoceroses gather together.” 1 ‘‘ Agisymba ”’ 
is a vague term, impossible to define exactly, and the term 
‘* Ethiopians ’’ was used generally to describe the black 
peoples of the interior. Thus the whole vast stretch of 
country from the northern Soudan to equatorial Africa was 

4 Geog.,,1, 8. 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 23 
vaguely designated as ‘“‘ Atthiopia’’ and Agisymba was the 
farthest point believed to have been reached by men. The 
Congress or Diet of Rhinoceroses is even more mysterious. 
Unimaginative scholars have asserted and doubtless will 
continue to assert, that the MS. reading is corrupt. 

It has been necessary to say something of exploration 
in the first two centuries and of Ptolemy’s work, because, as 
was suggested at the beginning, it is only by contrast with 
this earlier period that the retrogression in the succeeding 
centuries can be fully realized. 

For this retrogression, which was most rapid during the 
period A.D. 300 to 500 political conditions are to blame 
first and foremost. Large tracts of country which had once 
formed part of the Empire were either wholly lost or occupied 
by half-civilized invaders, who even when they were nominally 
the vassals of the Roman Emperors were little to be relied 
upon. Thus gradually Dacia, much of Gaul, and Spain 
passed into barbarian hands; and even within the shrunken 
empire there were many tracts occupied, with the forced 
consent of the Emperor, by kinsmen of those barbarians 
who had come there in the earlier years. Britain ceased to 
be part of the empire early in the fifth century and part of 
North Africa was seized by the Vandals ; for the next twenty 
years or so treaties and wars with Rome alternated, but the 
net result was the loss to Rome of the North African provinces. 
With this constant unrest, fighting and movement of peoples, 
necessary travel, even within the Empire, was hazardous ; to 
pass into the little known regions beyond was well nigh 
impossible. And, besides, exploration hardly comes under 
the head of necessary travel. 

On the Eastern Frontier conditions were somewhat different ; 
after Julian’s expedition to Persia in A.D. 363 that country 
and Rome were at peace, save for one or two insignificant 
episodes, for nearly a century and a half. Yet even here 
travel, and consequently knowledge, grew less; for it would 
appear that while under the Early Empire, the Roman 
merchant himself not infrequently made his way to the Middle 
and Far East, in the later period the carrying trade passed 
almost entirely into other hands, Persian, Arab or Abyssinian. 
The northern overland route through the Dariel Pass by way 
of the Caspian to Central Asia was doubtless too insecure for 


24 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


even the most adventurous, and it is not till Justinian’s time, 
in the middle of the sixth century, that some attempt 
at reopening this caravan route was made. 

If political causes were responsible for a decrease in practical 
exploration, the decline in the theoretical study of geography 
was largely the fault of the Church. The attitude of most 
Christian writers at that time was not calculated to promote 
any form of scientific inquiry. A literal interpretation of 
Genesis could not be brought into harmony with the Ptolemaic 
system of the Universe and the postulate of a spherical 
earth, and so progress in knowledge was ruled out. A 
definite example will serve to illustrate how a truth stated 
in Ptolemy was lost for some twelve centuries : Herodotus 
in the fifth century B.c. knew the true nature of the Caspian 
Sea, that is to say he knew it to be a vast inland lake and not a 
gulf of the northern ocean. His successors adhered to the 
false view, but Marinus of Tyre and, following him, Ptolemy 
quite definitely stated the true facts. Marinus indeed seems 
to have known of a trade route running northwards from the 
River Don round the Caspian to Lake Aral, and he mentions 
rivers—e.g. the Volga and the Ural—not known before. 
This is the information found in Ptolemy; in the early part 
of the fifth century 4.p. one Marcianus of Heraclea composed 
a short geographical treatise which is a rehash of earlier 
authors, mainly Ptolemy. Yet when Marcianus says that 
the Persian Gulf is opposite to the Caspian Sea, and that by 
these two is formed the Isthmus of Asia, it is clear that he 
has reverted to the erroneous view about the Caspian. The 
Peutinger Table also perpetuates the error, which in the West 
lasted in fact till the fourteenth century, though the Arab 
geographers seem to have been aware of the true nature of 
that sea. It is a pleasure to find that one of the Christian 
Fathers, St. Basil, has the courage and fairmindedness to 
mention both the right and the wrong view, though he does 
not commit himself definitely to either. Elsewhere we also meet 
an ingenious attempt to combine both views—that at least 
is what it sounds like—for we are told that the Caspian was 
fed by the Northern, i.e. the Arctic Sea, through underground 
channels. 

I have mentioned St. Basil ; he, in common with some of the 
other earlier Fathers, is well aware of the Greek scientific 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 25 


theory that the earth was spherical. There is a striking 
passage in one of his Homilies on the creation of 
the world in Genesis as follows: ‘* Because those who 
write on cosmography have argued at length about the shape 
of the earth, namely whether it is a sphere or a cylinder, 
whether it resembles a quoit and is rounded off on the outside 
as with a potter’s wheel, or whether it is shaped like a 
winnowing fan and is concave in the middle—for the writers 
on cosmography have been led toall these hypotheses, and each 
man sets out to destroy the views of the others—that is no 
reason why I should proceed to call our cosmography [i.e. 
that based on a literal interpretation of the O.T.] less valuable 
because Moses, the servant of God, has said nothing concern- 
ing the shape of the earth and not stated that the earth’s 
circumference is 180,000 stades.’?1 The last remark is a 
reference to the estimate of the Greek Poseidonios. Now 
this quotation is the utterance of one of the most enlightened 
of the Fathers, and it makes us understand why the truth 
was first suppressed and then forgotten by later ecclesiastical 
writers. In one or two secular authors of the fifth century 
—Macrobius and Martianus Capella for example—we still 
find something of a defence of the Ptolemaic theory on this 
point. But in the two ecclesiastical authors who exerted a 
paramount influence on later ages, Cassiodorus (early sixth 
century) and Isidore (early seventh century), the earth is 
described as a flat disc. 

We may now consider some of the geographical treatises 
composed during the period under consideration. One of 
the few works written in Greek is the treatise of Marcianus 
of Heraclea, to which reference has already been made. It 
cannot be said to add anything to knowledge, though it has 
some value for correcting the text of Ptolemy that has come 
down to us. For instance, when Marcianus relates that east 
of the Seres (i.e. China) is an unknown land full of marshy 
lakes, in which great reeds grow so close together that you 
ean cross the lakes by walking on top of the reeds, he is 
copying Ptolemy word for word. Supposing Ptolemy’s 
text to be corrupt in some such passage as this, it is obvious 
that Marcianus may be useful to a modern editor for restoring 
the right reading in the older writer. Where Marcianus tries 

1 Homil. in Hexaem., ix, 1 (= Migne, Patr. Graec., xxix, 188 C-D). 


26 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to improve on his predecessors he fails miserably ; thus, in 
estimating the size of Ceylon, he attempts to correct Ptolemy 
and only makes matters very much worse. Ptolemy got 
the shape of the island fairly right, but he made it many 
times too large. In Marcianus’ version the size of the island 
is even more exaggerated. Other Greek treatises of this 
period, like the Outlines of Geography by Agathemeros, have 
even less value than Marcianus. , 

The Latin treatises are no more helpful; they repeat in 
abbreviated form what was to be found in the writers of the 
early empire. Thus Solinus (late third century) is mainly 
indebted to the elder Pliny and to Pomponius Mela ; nor does 
Orosius (early fifth century), who prefaces his history with a 
short geographical survey of the Ancient world, do more than 
excerpt his predecessors. Linguistically there are now and 
then points of interest in these writers; for instance, Solinus 
is the first to use the word mediterraneus, though as an 
adjective, of what we now call the Mediterranean, while 
Orosius is the earliest writer to use the term Asia Minor in its 
modern sense. But the invariable practice of these later 
authors is to copy and abridge their predecessors, and from 
such work it is hopeless to expect much enlightenment. The 
chief interest of most of these compilations lies in the fact 
that their continued use can often be traced in the earlier 
Middle Ages. Thus, a little tract, dating perhaps from the 
fifth century, formed the basis of one section of a geographical 
treatise composed by the ninth century monk Dicuil. Another 
anonymous writer composed a work which bears the impres- 
sive title, by no means warranted by the contents, of Descrip- 
tion of the Whole World and its Races, and this is even more 
instructive for our purpose. 

What has come down to us is a Latin version of a Greek 
original compiled late in the fourth century. The Latin 
version is considerably later in date, and this version was in 
its turn worked over by a Christian writer. We fortunately 
possess both the earlier and the later Latin versions, and when 
they are compared it is seen that the Christian adapter has 
in a number of cases omitted sentences or sections that were 
too pagan in tone. He omits, for example, a section on the 
religions of Egypt, which is found in the earlier version. 
Elsewhere his methods are even more arbitrary. The original 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 27 


writer had given some account of the Indian Brahmins: in the 
Christian adaptation a remarkable story is superimposed of a 
people who once dwelt in the Garden of Eden, and this is fitted 
on to the description of the Brahmins, whose name is 
suppressed. As it is a good example of the mingling of fact and 
fiction the earlier part of the passage may be quoted: “‘ In the 
regions of the East they tell us dwell the peoples of the 
Camarini, whose land Moses described by the name of Eden. 
From here a mighty river is said to flow forth and then to 
branch off into four streams named Geon, Phison, Tigris, 
and Euphrates. Now the men who dwell in the aforesaid 
land are extremely pious and good. No blemish is to be found 
in their bodies or in their minds. If you, reader, would wish 
to learn something more definite about them, it is said that 
they neither use bread such as is in common use amongst 
us, nor any similar food, nor yet do they use fire such as we use. 
Rather, we are assured that bread falls down like rain for their 
daily need, and that they drink honey and poppy.! The 
fire of their sun is of such intense heat that as soon as it is 
diffused from heaven on to the earth all of them would be 
burnt did they not quickly plunge into the river. There 
they tarry until the fire returns again to the place from whence 
it came.” ? It is easy to see how a few passages in the Old 
Testament could be the germs of this fantasy ; the noteworthy 
thing is that this passage is immediately followed by a rational 
account of the simple life and habits of the Brahmins. The 
regular immersions of these holy but amphibious dwellers 
in Eden remind one a little of the practice of the early Slavs 
who, we are told, ‘‘ could elude a foe by diving under water 
and lying for hours on the bottom, breathing through a long 
reed, which only the most experienced pursuer could detect.” 
. Of far greater value than these treatises are the so-called 
Antonine Itinerary, composed about the year A.D. 300, and 
the Peutinger Table, the original form of which was slightly 
later in date. The Antonine Itinerary gives in tabulated form 
the distances between most of the towns and ports of the 
Empire. Hitherto the prevailing view has been that it was 


1 The MSS. reading is pipere, pepper. This is certainly a scribe’s 
error for papavere, poppy. 

2 Geogr. Graect Minores, ii, 513. 

* J. B. Bury, Hist. of the Later Rom. Emp., ii, 294. 


28 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the nature of an official guide-book, but Kubitschek,! after 
an exhaustive inquiry, has shown conclusively that the 
Itinerary cannot have been compiled by any official having 
access to either civil or military records, nor yet by any 
trained geographer. The errors are too glaring for that, 
and the difficulties, that have up to now been unexplained, 
disappear if we regard the Itinerary as having been compiled 
from a map of the Empire, such as that of Agrippa, by some 
pupil or other inexperienced person. Even so, and for want 
of more reliable records, it has great value for showing the 
road system of the Empire and its administrative divisions 
after the reorganization of Diocletian. 

The Peutinger Table has been aptly described as “a sort of 
panoramic chart on which towns, roads, mountains, forests, 
etc., are marked without any approach to delineating the 
outline of the countries, except in the vicinity of the Bosphorus 
and Constantinople.” ? But, save for a few Christian 
additions, the map represents the Empire as it was in the 
first century A.D. 

In the literature of this period other than the specialized 
treatises to which reference has already been made, it can be 
said that there is an advance in knowledge in one science 
closely allied to geography. Ammianus Marcellinus, writing 
in the second half of the fourth century, is for his geographical 
details primarily indebted to Ptolemy, and often he is less 
accurate than his authority. The advance in knowledge 
is in the sphere of ethnology or anthropology, not of 
geography. From Ammianus, from the surviving fragments 
of the fifth century historian Priscus, and from Jordanes, the 
Gothic writer of the sixth century, we get valuable information 
about the customs and mode of life of the nomad invaders 
of the Empire, Goths, Huns, and so forth. But the 
geographical data for the movements of these peoples are of 
the vaguest, making it at times singularly difficult to fix with 
precision the district which this tribe or that occupied within 
a narrow limit of time. That the spirit of inquiry, in so far 
as it is concerned with geography, was not wholly dead just 
before the time when Ammianus was composing his history, 


* See his long articles, ‘‘ Itinerarien’’ and ‘“ Karten” in Pauly- 
Wissowa-Kroll, Realencyclopaedie d. klass. Alertums wisschenschaft. 
2 W. G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian and Theodora, i, 141, note I. 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 29 


is illustrated by a reference which has apparently been ignored 
or overlooked by modern scholars. When the future Emperor 
Julian was governor of Gaul (A.D. 361-2) he corresponded 
with his friend Alypius, who at the time held a high official 
position in the neighbouring province of Britain. In the 
particular letter to which I refer the following passage occurs: 
*‘ It happened that when you sent me your map I had just 
recovered from my illness, but I was none the less glad on 
that account to receive the drawing [or “‘ chart ’’] that you 
sent. For not only does it contain diagrams better than any 
hitherto made, but you have embellished it by adding those 
lambic verses. ... In fact, the gift is such as no doubt it 
well became you to give, while to me it is most agreeable to 
receive it.”?1 The reference is tantalizingly incomplete, 
which is perhaps one of the reasons for its neglect by modern 
writers ; but it does seem a not unreasonable hypothesis, in 
view of Alypius’ place of residence and official position, 
that map and diagrams illustrated the geography of Britain. 
Yet it is unlikely that Alypius’ researches ever became known 
to any but his immediate friends, for they have left no trace 
in later authors ; and it was only fifty years later that Britain 
was evacuated by the Roman Government. In the sixth 
century Procopius could pen a description of Britain, which 
made at least a part of this island a fabulous land and a home 
for departed spirits ! 

One of the most cultured men of the fifth century was 
undoubtedly, to give him his full name, Caius Solius 
Apollinaris Sidonius. He held the highest civil offices and 
later in life was consecrated bishop, and his letters are one of 
the most valuable sources that we now possess for the history 
of his age. Yet these letters give one the impression that 
the man’s interests were singularly narrow, centred very 
largely on the city of Rome and still more on that part of Gaul 
in which he spent most of his life. Still, Gaul was at that 
period largely occupied, as well as surrounded, by the so- 
called Barbarians, and Sidonius must have had unique 
opportunities for learning something of their customs and 
institutions, and something of the geography of the districts 
beyond the Rhine and Danube, from which they had come. 
What do we find? Sidonius expresses the utmost surprise 

1 Epistle 30. 


30 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and admiration for his friend Syagrius for having “picked up 
a knowledge of the German tongue” (probably Burgundian 
is meant). Where geographical references occur in Sidonius 
they are mere literary adornment, echoes of older poets and 
writers whom he had read. When he speaks of “ voyaging in 
imagination with our citizen of Tyana to Caucasus and Ind, 
among the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia and the Brahmins of 
Hindustan,’’! he merely shows us that he has read Philostratus’ 
life of Apollonius of Tyana, written more than two centuries 
before ; when he writes “‘ you come down to Langon harbour 
with no less reluctance than one bound for the Danube 
to resist the all-invading Massagetee, or for the dull flood of 
Nile with all its awful crocodiles’’,? or when he refers to ‘‘ the 
Sigambri on their marshes or the Alans of the Caucasus or 
the mare-milking Geloni ’’,? he is merely cramming his writing 
with allusions to earlier literature and cultivating what his 
age considered a fine literary style, though his modern readers 
when struggling with his prolix periods will often give it a less 
complimentary name. At all events such passages have no 
geographical or ethnographical value; the Alans, or a large 
portion of them, had long since moved from the Caucasus, 
while the allusions to the Massagete and the rest are mere 
echoes of Vergil, Horace or Lucan. 

From such precious writing one turns with relief to actual 
records of travel at this time. Between s.p. 300 and 500 
travelling within the Empire must often have been infinitely 
more difficult and dangerous than in the earlier period, 
and this is of course still more true of the districts beyond. 
The records that have come down to us are not numerous, 
though passing references to journeys undertaken, but with 
no details given, are not rare. The accounts that have 
survived tell of travels that had a religious, not a commercial 
purpose, with one notable exception, to which we shall 
return. The others are either narratives of pilgrimages to 
holy places or expeditions for the conversion of the heathen. 
One or two examples of each may with advantage be con- 
sidered a little more in detail. 

The so-called Jerusalem Itinerary preserves the record 


1 Letters (transl. Dalton), viii, 3. 
2 Ibid., viii, 12. 
® Thide iy, 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 31 


of a pilgrimage undertaken in the year A.D. 333 from 
Bordeaux to Palestine. The route followed was via 
Milan to Aquileia and Sirmium, and thence, following the 
course of the Danube most of the way, to Constantinople; 
from there the pilgrims made their way through Asia 
- Minor and Syria to the Holy Land. On the _ return 
journey they went by way of Macedonia, Epirus, and 
Rome. Unfortunately this record, apart from a more 
detailed description of Jerusalem and_ neighbourhood, 
contains practically nothing but the names of post stations 
and caravanserais on the route, with the distances in leagues 
or miles from point to point. Only rarely is there 
any further comment. Still this Itinerary is of considerable 
importance for the evidence it supplies regarding the Imperial 
road system at this date. 

The narrative of the Abbess Etheria, is, however, of much 
more human interest.! In 386, or thereabouts, the Abbess 
started out from Southern Gaul to visit the Holy Land. The 
beginning of her story is lost, for when the account, as we now 
have it, opens she is already in the act of ascending Mount 
Sinai. After a considerable stay in the Sinai district, she made 
her way across a stretch of desert to Pelusium and thence she 
followed the coastal road to Palestine. She made some long 
distance excursions from Jerusalem, e.g. to the eastern side of 
the Dead Sea, and finally set out via Antioch to Edessa in 
Northern Mesopotamia. She then returned to Antioch and 
from there passed on through Asia Minor to Constantinople. As 
some of her narrative is lost, we do not know all that she saw, 
but we learn that she was away from home for four years. She 
proceeded in leisurely fashion and, being a person of impor- 
tance, occasionally had a military escort. She received a 
friendly reception from the clergy and monastic communities 
wherever she went, and was keenly interested in all she saw. 
A modern reader can, however, but regret that the reverend 
lady’s interests were so exclusively spiritual. A little more— 
we will not say profanity—but a little more interest in things 
secular is what we should like to find in her, for she could have 
told us so much of the condition of the countries through 
which she passed and of the people she saw, in a period about 
many aspects of which we know singularly little. It is no 

1 For a fuller reference to the Abbess Etheria see next chapter. 


32 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


doubt improving to the mind to have a description of the 
cave where Moses rested before and after he received the 
Tables of the Law, or to learn the very place where he stood 
when the Lord appeared to him in the Burning Bush. 
Perhaps we are provoked to smile when she tells us that she 
saw the very spot, near the ancient Sodom, where the salt pillar 
stood that was once Lot’s wife. She assures her fellow 
nuns, for whom her narrative was written, that the pillar was 
no longer to be seen, but the local bishop informed her that 
it had been standing there till a few years before. And yet, 
although Etheria commands our deep respect both for her 
intrepid enterprise and for a general saneness of outlook 
which, in spite of occasional lapses, is in striking contrast 
to the childish credulity of later pilgrims, nevertheless, we 
should give much to have an occasional remark about the 
conditions of life of the town and country dweller, or a passing 
judgment on the degree of material prosperity to be found, 
say in Palestine or Syria at that date, or even a stray comment 
on sites and buildings of purely secular interest. Only rarely 
she permits herself to comment on the beautiful scenery in 
some spot or on the fine vineyards and orchards that she 
saw on her journeys; she also mentions that there was a 
small Roman garrison at Clysma, near the modern Suez, 
but such remarks are the exception in her tale; the visiting 
of all possible sites mentioned in the Scriptures is her 
real purpose, and we can see that the inventiveness of her 
guides was fully equal to satisfying all her eager questions, 
From pilgrims we pass easily to missionary journeys. 
There is a remarkable adventure, which is related by several 
ecclesiastical historians as occurring about the year A.D. 330. 
A certain philosopher of Tyre, Meropius by name, set 
out for “India”, and was accompanied on his travels 
by two young boys Aidesius and Frumentius. What pre- 
cisely is meant by “‘ India” it is difficult to say for reasons 
which will be indicated hereafter. At any rate, on their 
way home the travellers’ ship put in at a harbour for water and 
food somewhere on the coast of Ethiopia, that is to say, 
what we should now call Abyssinia. Meropius and the 
entire ship’s crew were killed by the savage natives, but the 
two boys, in the words of the oldest historian who records 
these events, ‘‘ were discovered beneath a tree in meditation 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 33 


and engaged in the preparation of their lessons.”?1 Such 
virtuous diligence had its reward, for the natives had com- 
passion on Aiédesius’ and Frumentius’ youth, spared their 
lives and took them to the king of the country. They 
received employment at his court, rose high in the royal 
favour and began the teaching of Christianity there. On 
the death of the king, Frumentius was made tutor to the new 
king, who was still a child. Ultimately the two men were 
allowed to leave; Addesius returned to Tyre, but Frumentius 
made his way to Alexandria ; there he interviewed Athanasius, 
and was soon after made first bishop of Abyssinia. Here 
the historian ends his narrative, but it is known that some 
years later Frumentius was succeeded by an Arian bishop, 
Theophilus, since an Arian Emperor was now installed at 
Constantinople. Theophilus was a native of Diu island, off 
the Gujerat peninsula to the west of the Gulf of Cambay. 
He went on a mission to the Himyarites in South Arabia, 
visited the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotra, off 
the south Arabian coast, and thence went to Axum in 
Abyssinia. He does not appear to have been allowed to stay 
there very long. It is not till the very end of the fifth or 
the beginning of the sixth century that we hear of further 
missionary activities in those parts. 

As in the itineraries of pilgrims, so in the accounts 
of the ecclesiastical historians, scarcely any geographical 
information is given. Early in the fourth century we 
further hear of the conversion of the Iberians of the 
Caucasus. The story of this conversion is full of the most 
miraculous particulars, but their embassy to the Emperor 
at Constantinople is doubtless an historic fact. They asked 
for alliance and treaty with the Empire, and also requested 
that priests be sent to them to propagate the Gospel. It is 
somewhat remarkable that no knowledge of Christianity had 
filtered through to them before, and it seems to confirm, what 
is made probable by other evidence, that the northern trade 
route to the Far East had practically fallen into disuse by this 
time. Again it is not till the sixth century that we get some 
more information about these people, and one writer who 
refers to them, Theophanes, adds the interesting comment 
that their chief city is Tiphilis. So far as I am aware, this is 

1 Rufinus, x, 9. 


34 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the earliest mention of Tiflis, the modern capital of the 
Caucasus region, and the same historian is also the first 
Westerner to refer to the Turks by that name. 

It was hinted above that a difficulty often confronts the 
modern inquirer when he meets with the name “ India ”’ or 
** Indians ”’ in writers of his time. ‘‘ It is to be observed,”’ 
says Professor Bury, “that the cessation of direct trade 
with the East was reflected in the decline of geographical 
knowledge illustrated by the misuse of ‘India’ to designate 
Aithiopia, which is frequent in Greek and Latin writers from 
the fourth century.”?! Thus we cannot be sure that Meropius 
and his boy companions really did visit India before they met 
with disaster on their homeward voyage, or whether their 
travels were confined to the Red Sea. The fact is that all 
the southern regions situated east of the Nile were commonly 
referred to as India; the Nile is referred to as the boundary 
between Asia and Africa, and thus we find, for example, the 
sixth century historian Procopius describing that river as 
flowing from India to Egypt, and dividing the ght) country 
into two, till it reached the sea. 

Here we may pause for a moment to consider that remark- 
able person, Cosmas, nicknamed “ Indicopleustes ”? or the 
Indian traveller. Chronologically he belongs to the sixth 
century, but much of the information he gives is doubtless 
true of the age immediately preceding his own, and we are 
therefore justified in including him in our survey. The main 
purpose of his Christian Topography, written about A.D. 550 is, 
in the words of Gibbon, ‘‘ to confute the impious heresy of 
those who maintain that the earth is a globe and not a flat 
oblong table as it is represented in the Scriptures,’”’ but in 
his earlier years Cosmas had himself travelled considerably, 
and references to his experiences are scattered through the 
earlier books of his work or collected in Book XI. This 
book, though now attached to the Christian Topography, in 
reality belonged to a lost work recording his travels. Cosmas 
visited Ethiopia, i.e. Abyssinia, and voyaged in the Persian 
Gulf; he also went to Socotra, and he further quotes a 
merchant, Sopatros, who had been to Ceylon. He speaks of 
Christian Churches in that island and in several districts 


1 History of the Later Roman Empire, ii, 318, note 2. 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 35 


on the West coast of India; the bishop under whose care 
these Christians were had been ordained, he says, in Persia. 
Cosmas further has the distinction of being the first and the 
only ancient writer to enunciate the truth that beyond China 
on the east is the ocean. He speaks of “ the land of Tzinista, 
beyond which is no other land. For the Ocean encircles it 
on the Kast”. Ptolemy and earlier geographers had put 
terra incognita beyond the land of the Sinai and the Seres. 
And yet it is at least doubtful whether Cosmas ever himself 
visited India, though most modern writers state categorically 
that he did. There is really nothing in the information 
that he gives about that country or about Ceylon which he 
could not have learnt from Sopatros or other travellers. 
Thus, he describes the Indian ox in a delightful way : ‘‘ This 
wild ox is a large Indian animal, and from it is got what is 
called toupha (i.e. a chowry or fly-flapper), with which 
commanders of armies decorate their horses and banners 
when taking the field. If his tail, it is said, catches in a tree, 
he does not seek to move off, but stands stock-still, having 
a strong aversion to lose even a single hair of his tail. So 
the people of the place come and cut off his tail, and then 
the beast, having lost it all, makes his escape. Such is the 
nature of this animal.’”?! The words “it is said’’, suggest 
that Cosmas had not seen the patient either before or after the 
operation! In general it is to be noted that Cosmas on a 
number of occasions remarks that he had himself seen a 
particular thing, but he only does this when speaking of the 
lands bordering on the Red Sea. So perhaps ‘‘ Indicopleustes ”’ 
should really be rendered ‘‘ Abyssinian” or ‘“‘ Red Sea 
navigator’’. With South Arabia, and especially with Ethiopia 
or Abyssinia, he was clearly well acquainted. After describing 
a number of sights and occurrences he says, no doubt quite 
truthfully, ‘‘ The facts which I have just recorded fell partly 
under my own observation and partly were told to me by 
traders who had been to those parts.”” He gives us a remark- 
able account of a great expedition of traders which was 
dispatched every other year by the orders of the king of 
Abyssinia from the capital, Axum, into the interior. The 
commodity for which the merchants were sent was gold; in 


1 Cosmas (McCrindle’s translation), p. 360. 


36 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


exchange for it they gave the natives salt, iron, and cattle. 
Cosmas describes the very primitive methods of barter em- 
ployed and tells us that the expedition was away six months. 
The return journey was made with all possible speed “lest’’, 
to quote him again, “‘ they should be overtaken by winter and 
its rains. For the sources of the river Nile lie somewhere 
in these parts, and in winter, on account of the heavy rains, 
the numerous rivers which they generate obstruct the path 
of the traveller’.1 The sources mentioned here are 
the sources of the Blue Nile, to which Ptolemy had also 
referred four centuries earlier. As regards the East Coast of 
Africa, Cosmas does not appear to have been further than the 
Somali coast. No attempt has been made here to discuss 
Cosmas’ geographical theories, for two reasons : first, because 
they concern the theologian more than the geographer or 
the historian and, second, it is quite certain that, to use a 
colloquialism, they “did not catch on’. That is to say, 
Cosmas’ Christian Topography did not influence later writers 
in the field of geography. 

An attempt has been made to show that in the period 
A.D. 3800-500 the activities of Rome’s attackers had 
virtually closed large tracts of country to the traveller, 
whatever his particular aims; further, that what records 
of travel we possess for this age can only in a few instances 
be said to add anything to the geographical knowledge 
possessed in the preceding centuries, while, on the other hand, 
truths that had been known to Ptolemy or Marinus had been 
forgotten or condemned as impious; and, last, that the 
geographical treatises composed in this period not only add 
nothing new, but merely repeat in a shortened, and often in a 
garbled form, what is to be found in writers like Pomponius 
Mela and Pliny, whose sum total of knowledge about the 
geography of the ancient world, the oikoumene, was less per- 
fect than that of Marinus and Ptolemy. And here a word 
must be added about the geographical textbooks used in the 
earlier Middle Agesin the West. It has already been pointed 
out that some of the treatises composed between A.D. 800 and 
500 continued to be used at a later date. Another little 
book which enjoyed great popularity was a sketchy geography 


1 Ons citi Daa 


DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 37 


put together by a certain Julius Honorius. It owed its large 
circulation mainly to the fact that Cassiodorus, the father 
of medieval scholarship, had recommended it to monastic 
students as a textbook. At the beginning of the seventh 
century Isidore of Seville composed a work in twenty sections 
which was a compendium of all the arts and sciences. To 
compile this book Isidore had recourse to older treatises of 
varying degrees of value dealing with the separate subjects, 
-and his compilation very largely superseded the older works 
in the centuries that followed. The distinguished American 
scholar, Professor E. K. Rand, remarks in one of his most 
sprightly essays : ‘‘ One of the most useful rules that I know 
for guiding the investigator in medieval fields is to inquire 
first ‘ what does St. Isidore say about it?’’?! The universal 
use of Isidore in the Middle Ages implied in this sentence 
is not an exaggeration, and nothing illustrates this better than 
the subject with which this paper is concerned. Wherever 
you have a geographical treatise or a section on geography 
in a larger work during the next few centuries you are sure 
to find that Isidore is either the sole source, or at least one 
of the most important. Several anonymous geographical 
poems and treatises of the eight and ninth centuries depend 
mainly on him, and in the Liber Glossarum, that huge 
encyclopedia cwm dictionary compiled early in the eighth 
century, the geographical sections are culled primarily from that 
author. The geographical sections in Orosius are also con- 
stantly used or reproduced, as for example in the Liber 
Glossarum and in the early part of the Venerable Bede’s 
Ecclesiastical History. What then do we find? Simply that 
the geographical treatises put together in these centuries bear 
little or no relation to the times in which they were composed. 
Dicuil’s book has the distinction of being the first geographical 
work composed in the Frankish Kingdom; the author used 
several sources besides Isidore, most of them earlier than the 
latter, but there are scarcely any references to the Frankish 
Kingdom and none at all to the remoter parts of Germany, 
for instance to Saxony or Bavaria. Instead he repeats vague 
statements about Germany from Pliny. In Pliny’s day 
most of what we now call Germany was terra incognita, but 


1 Philolog. Quarterly (Iowa), 1922, 1, 294. 


38 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


that was not the case in Dicuil’s time, when it should have been 
possible to obtain accurate information about the more 
easterly parts of that country. Dicuil had not even seen 
Tacitus’ Germania, from which one may perhaps deduce 
that there was no manuscript of that work in the Frankish 
kingdom at that time. 

' It has seemed desirable to indicate, however inadequately, 
the sources from which in the age following the break up of 
the Western Empire geographical knowledge was acquired and 
books on that subject were composed. The work of Ptolemy 
might never have existed for all the influence it exerted in 
those centuries. As for our subject in the period of the later 
empire, one is, perhaps reluctantly, compelled to acquiesce in 
the severe judgment of a German scholar on this topic: 
** New countries were not discovered; the empire became 
smaller not greater ; trade relations, thanks to the wars in 
the east, the south and the north, became more and more 
restricted ; besides, there was no longer any question of 
research in industry and of the spirit of discovery. Thus the 
only books that were put together were compilations from 
older works.”’ 1 


1 W. Schmid, Gesch. d. griechisch, Liter., ii, 852. 


CHAPTER III 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES, A.D. 500-800 


By The Rev. Prof. CLAUDE JENKINS, D.D., F.S.A. 


14 renee grows in the island of Madagascar a tree of which 
all have heard. Its long straight stem is crowned 
with leaves spread vertically, but like a fan. At its base 
collects water wherewith the wayfarer may slake his thirst 
and so pursue his road refreshed and comforted. The student 
of early medieval pilgrimages may often dream that he sees 
on the margin of his research a group of such travellers’ 
trees in the figures known or anonymous of the chroniclers 
and writers of the times. But the stems of narrative have 
a symmetry only too often deceptive, the fan-like crown of 
travellers’ tales soars beyond the reach of his perhaps too 
prosaic mind, and the moisture which trickles to the base 
affords a scanty draught for the thirst engendered by the 
sawdust of the modern scientific method. Yet there is more 
to win than discloses itself to the first view. The roots lie 
hid beneath the soil of many lands—Ireland and Britain, 
Gaul and the Teutonic regions, Italy, Spain, and many 
another yet further removed; and a section of the stem 
discloses the rings of growth which tell the story of the years. 

The period assigned to this chapter and the scope of its 
subject are alike limited ; but he would be a poor medievalist 
who should allow himself to be trammelled unduly by such 
considerations. Certainly the student who approaches a 
medieval writer of travels with the expectation of finding 
the information set forth with the succinct brevity of a 
Baedeker will not always be disappointed, and very precious 
may be the first part of the Itinerary of the Bordeaux 
Pilgrim of the fourth century to a man with an eye for 
country. But not less precious for other reasons are the 
apparent irrelevancies when a narrator halts in his description 
to tell a story which he has learnt from a fellow traveller 


40 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


by the way, or heard from the lips of a holy bishop or 
other unimpeachable authority, to introduce some marvel 
of what may seem to us very unnatural science, or to 
confirm a story by what we may regard as a piece of 
scriptural exegesis no less strange. Our copy of Herodotus 
may be studded thickly with the injurious reflexions 
of a modern commentator; but the fame of the Father 
of History shines with a lustre quite undimmed by such 
criticisms ; and in the same way to stigmatize a medieval 
writer as credulous or superstitious is to throw away at the 
outset the key to the interpretation of what he writes, to 
falsify history through our own anachronisms, and to treat 
as negligible what may be the most valuable thing in the 
narrative before us—the disclosure of the man who wrote 
and of the age in which he lived. 

How then shall we begin our own peregrinations through the 
literature ? We will remind ourselves that a peregrination 
is a journeying abroad, travelling through a foreign country 
far from one’s own home; but it is not therefore necessarily 
a pilgrimage, though it may be one. In other words many 
of the journeys of Celtic monks to the continent were 
peregrinations, but they were not, like those of Etheria, 
pilgrimages in the strict sense. Let us begin with one which 
purports perhaps to fall within the period with which we are 
mainly concerned and has some claim to both titles. It 
can be read conveniently in the new translation of the Life 
of St. David by Mr. Wade-Evans.! 

St. David is bidden by an angel to go to Jerusalem, accom- 
panied by two companions, also angelically warned, one of 
whom is Eiludd or Teilo, the other Padarn. ‘When they had 
sailed over the Britannic sea and were come into the Gauls 
and were hearing the strange languages of diverse nations, 
father David was endowed with the gift of tongues like that 
apostolic gathering of old, lest when in need among foreign 
peoples they might want an interpreter, and also that they 
might confirm the faith of others with the word of truth. At 
length they arrive at the confines of the desired city, 
Jerusalem,’ where they are received and placed in ‘ three most 
honourable seats’ by the Patriarch who has been warned 
by an angel in a dream to expect them. ‘ Then, supported 

1 A, W. Wade-Evans, Life of St. David (S.P.C.K., 1923). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 41 


by the divine choice, he promotes holy David to the archi- 
episcopate,’ and urges him and his companions to confute the 
Jews. ‘They obey the command. They preach, each of 
them, every day. Their preaching becomes acceptable. 
Many come together to the faith. Others they strengthen.’ 
When they set out to return ‘the Patriarch presented father 
David with four gifts, to wit, a consecrated Altar, whereon 
he was wont to consecrate the Lord’s Body, which, potent 
in innumerable miracles, has never been seen by men from the 
death of its pontiff but, covered with skin veils, lies hidden 
away. Also, a remarkable Bell, which too is renowned for 
miracles. A Bachall [i.e. pastoral staff] and a tunic woven 
with gold. The Bachall, resplendent with glorious miracles, 
is extolled throughout the whole of our country for its wonders. 
‘** But because,” said the Patriarch, ‘‘ they are a labour for 
you to carry on the journey, whilst going back to your country, 
return in peace. I shall send them over after you.’’’ The 
gifts are accordingly transported by angels, David receiving 
his gift ‘in the monastery called Llan Gyvelach’, the others 
in their several monasteries. ‘Therefore it is that the 
common people call them gifts from heaven.’ 

What inferences, if any, are we to draw from this story ? 
In the form here quoted it is not earlier than Rhygyvarch 
or Ricemarch who lived at the end of the eleventh century. 
He claims to have based it on ‘ very old writings ... in 
the old style of the ancients ’, and he connects the story with 
a subsequent synod directed against a revival of Pelagianism 
in which Dewi achieved recognition as archbishop with the 
consent of ‘all the bishops, kings, princes, nobles, and all 
the grades of the whole Britannic race’ and ‘ his monastery 
too is declared the metropolis of the whole country’. If 
we accept as the old Welsh tradition! his account which places 
the birth of St. David thirty years after the arrival of 
St. Patrick in Ireland (c. 432), so that St. David would be born 
in 462, then Ricemarch himself is separated from St. David by 
more than five and a half centuries. If we accept the view of 
Bishop Basil Jones and Mr. Freeman, which places St. David’s 
establishment of his see early in the seventh century,” he 

1 Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. 2-3. 


2 W. B. Jones and FE. A. Freeman, History and Antiquities of 
St. Davids (London: Parker, 1856), p. 257. 


A2 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


is separated by a century less, but still by 450 years. Every- 
thing then will depend upon the credit we attach to the 
mention of the ‘ old writings’. It is an argument in favour 
of their real existence that Ricemarch seems more than once 
to be reproducing statements the meaning of which he does 
not understand. But if they existed, and if they contained 
the association of Dewi with the Synod of Brevi and the 
Synod of Victory, which are fixed for other reasons about 
569,! then did the writer realize that St. David if alive would 
have been 107 years of age? The answer is that in any case 
Ricemarch, and perhaps the documents before him, made 
David’s life extend to 147 years.2. Now the earliest form of 
the ‘ Annales Cambriae’ that we have, a MS. of the tenth 
century, merely says that David died in 601.2 It does not 
exclude the possibility of his association with the two Synods, 
nor does it confirm it. On the other hand such association 
would be impossible if we accepted the date given for David’s 
death, viz. 546, by William of Malmesbury‘ a statement 
which is difficult to set aside so easily as is done by Mr. Henry 
Bradley °; and while it may seem rash to accept a fact from 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, it does not seem certain that he is 
not right in attributing David’s burial to Maelgwyn king of 
Gwynedd,® who died probably in 547, 

The story of Ricemarch and perhaps of his authority 
is a patent effort to establish the supremacy of St. David’s 
see over the whole of the Church in Wales. We may venture 
to suggest that the substratum upon which the whole has 
been built is a tradition that David had visited Palestine. 
This was supposed to be confirmed by the existence of such 
relics as the portable bell mentioned later by Giraldus Cam- 
brensis 7 as existing in his time in the church of Glascwm, 
a bell, he says, ‘ of very great virtue, which they call by its 


1 A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Eccl. Documents 
(Clarendon Press, 1869), i, 116-17. 

* Wade-Evans, op. cit., p. 29. 

* Y Cymmrodor, ix, 156, cf. Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. x, 114. 

* De Antiq. Glaston. Eccl. in T. Gale, Hist. Brit., etc., Script. xv 
(Oxford, 1691), i, 299. 

5 Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. ‘ David’. 

* Hist. Regum. Brit., xi, 3. 

oy Ei ft Kambriae, i, 1 (Rolls Series, ed. J. F. Dimock, 1868, 
vi, 18). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 43 


proper name “ Bangu ”’ [i.e. “‘the dear, loud one’’?.], which 
also is said to have been St. David’s.’ That the tradition 
did not amount to more thana barestatement of a pilgrimage 
may be inferred from the fact that the story does not venture 
on an itinerary but transfers David and his companions 
straight from Gaul to Jerusalem. That it is early seems 
at least to be suggested by the further fact that Ricemarch 
does not mention as received from the Patriarch any relics 
connected with the sacred associations of Jerusalem itself, 
an omission which in the circumstances is noteworthy. 
Has the tradition itself any foundation in fact, or is it, as 
Mr. Bradley says, obviously an unmixed romance, as we may 
agree with him in holding the story of David’s ‘ consecration 
as archbishop by the patriarch’ to be? On the whole it 
would seem that the balance of probability does not justify 
us in wholly rejecting it. It may be said that we have pre- 
served very little of the good bishop’s detailed story ; but 
at any rate we have not impeached his veracity, and have 
admitted the possibility that there may have been some 
vague foundation for what we hold him to have been sincere 
in believing. 

Dom Gougaud, in his work on Gaelic Pioneers of 
Christianity has been at pains to collect descriptions of the 
motives which led men to leave their native land and flock to 
the continent in a voluntary exile ‘ for the love of God’, * for 
the name of the Lord’, ‘for the name of Christ’, ‘ pro 
remedio animae’, ‘to gain a country in heaven’, and the 
like.2 In some cases it may be difficult to distinguish such a 
motive from what we usually associate with a pilgrimage. 
Dom Gougaud, however, sees most of such travellers rather 
as voluntary exiles, ‘for the real pilgrim betakes himself 
to the sanctuary which is the aim of his special devotion ; 
then, his pious journey over, he returns to his own land and 
resumes his usual life.” The distinction is perhaps sound and 
is certainly convenient. 

The instinct for travel, or even for wandering, is innate in 
some natures in all ages, perhaps in far more than we often 
realize. But it was not universal. There is a story in the 


1 Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. 82, 107. 
2 Dom. L. Gougaud, Gaelic Pioneers of Christianity (Dublin, 
M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1923), pp. 5-8. 


AA TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


‘Life of St. Columba’ of a wife who told the sixth century 
saint that she did not refuse to undertake the whole care of a 
house or even, if he bade her, go overseas (to which a later 
editor adds,‘ to go on a journey to Jerusalem, if you bid me’), 
and to continue in a monastery of young girls : the one thing 
nothing would induce her to do was to live with her husband.? 
It is clear that the preference is for the lesser of two evils. 
But it is both devotion and enthusiasm for sacred antiquities 
which inspires people like Etheria of Aquitaine, whose 
* Peregrinatio’ was discovered by Giovanni Francesco 
Gamurrini just over forty years ago. It was contained in 
an eleventh century MS. at Arezzo, but it is to the fourth 
century that the story belongs. The MS. is thus separated 
from the journey by some 600 years, and though the narrative 
was written for the benefit of other nuns at home it does not 
seem to have acquired celebrity : at least we do not find it 
quoted by others until much later. There are, however, 
demonstrable, if unacknowledged, quotations from it in the 
work of Peter the Deacon in the twelfth century. It is worth 
while to remember this, for some of the most serious problems 
both of historical and geographical writings of the Middle 
Ages arise from the propensity of later writers to use, often 
indeed without indication that they are doing so, the narra- 
tives and descriptions of their predecessors. Only too often 
we think that we are reading, for example, the work of some 
medieval author, and so indeed we are ; but what is before us 
is, in fact, only an adaptation of Pliny the elder, or Solinus, 
or some other writer of a far earlier age, and sometimes 
we would give a good deal to be absolutely certain in the 
case of a great story of travel like that of Cosmas Indico- 
pleustes how much was the fruit of his own personal observa- 
tion, how much borrowed from earlier sources. 

Etheria belongs, as has been said, to the fourth century’: ; 
but since her narrative contains features which illustrate 
what follows some reference to it is excusable and even 
necessary. It is a mere accident of transmission that her 
‘Peregrinatio’, as we have it, opens with a sight of Sinai, 
where the pilgrims were received ‘ humanely ’ in the monas- 
tery. And whatever may be thought of some other writers, 


1 Vita Sancti Columbae auctore Adamnano, ii, 41. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 45 


she at least deserved to see the ‘ Tree of Truth’ of which she 
tells us: it was a sycamore-tree said to have been planted 
by Moses and Aaron ; it was very old and therefore very small, 
but it still bore fruit.1 The pilgrims travel at any rate in 
some places under the protection of an armed guard, and as 
they go Etheria gathers material in the way of stories. Her 
narrative bears witness to a real passion for travel, for it is 
the record not of one expedition but of several, and includes 
a stay of three years at Jerusalem. She journeys to Mesopo- 
tamia, where she is impressed by the swiftness of Kuphrates, 
which is ‘larger than the Rhone’. She visits the ‘ martyr- 
dom ’ of St. Thomas at Edessa, reads there some works with 
which his name was associated, sees thé marble portrait of 
the great king * Agbar’, who, unlike the Blessed Thomas, 
believed though he had not seen, and sees too the famous letter 
which he was said to have received from our Lord. There 
are copies of it in her own land, ‘ but these are longer,’ she 
tells nuns for whose benefit she is writing, *‘ you shall read 
them.’2 At the shrine of St. Tecla in Cilicia she reads the 
Acts of Tecla : it is characteristic of her whole attitude to do 
so; and in places of sacred associations she reads where- 
ever possible the Biblical passages in which they are men- 
tioned. What strikes us is the extraordinary humanness and 
simplicity of it all, and also the amazing endurance, for the 
narrative includes also a journey through Cappadocia, 
Galatia, and Bithynia to the scene of the martyrdom of 
St. Eufemia at Chalcedon, with the project at the end of a 
new journey to Ephesus. 

There is apparently a gap or dislocation in the MS. and 
the preface to the long discription of Lent and the Holy Week 
at Jerusalem is wanting. But what remains is of absorbing 
interest. Some things must be noted for the sake of contrast 
with the accounts of later pilgrims even if much has to be 
omitted. We must pass over the description of the sermons 
after Epiphany, when all the priests as well as the bishop 
preached, in succession as it would seem, upon the same 


1 “ dendros alethiae,’ S. Siluiae Peregrinatio, viii, §§ 3-4. [Corp. 
Script Eccl. Lat. xxxviiii, Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. P. Geyer 
(Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1898), pp. 48-9.] 

Pepi XIX, 6. 20 (ed... Geyer,. p.\.64): 


46 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


passage of Scripture,! and of the Lent which lasted for eight 
weeks ; the account of what a fast means and of the instruc- 
tion of candidates for baptism in the Scriptures and the 
Creed, an instruction which occupied three hours a day for 
seven weeks and was conducted by the bishop himself in the 
presence of fathers and mothers and others. There is a 
significant note that if anyone is a pilgrim (peregrinus) unless 
he has testimonies of character from those who know him 
he will not so easily attain to baptism.? 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre includes both ‘ Gol- 
gotha’ and the Sepulchre. Constantine’s church there was 
dedicated in 335, and destroyed by the Persians in 614. We 
have to picture to ourselves one large building at the western 
end of which is a round church, and in the centre of this again 
is the Sepulchre. Such is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
or, as it is also called, the ‘ Anastasis ’, or Church of the 
Resurrection. Eastward of it is an atrium surrounded by a 
colonnade, in one angle of which is ‘ Golgotha’. Still further 
eastward is the basilica of Constantine, which is called the 
‘Martyrium’. This has its apse at the west end, and beneath 
it is the crypt of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, and 
below that the crypt of the Invention of the Cross which she 
discovered. Beyond the Martyrium and eastward of it again 
is a rectangular court or atrium also with colonnades. The 
whole of what we have been describing can thus be regarded, 
as has been said, as one building with several divisions, each 
with its sacred associations and each used for its appropriate 
services. Most sacred of all is the reputed Sepulchre in the 
centre of the round church, or, as Etheria calls it, the basilica.® 
It is a cavern guarded by a railing and having a lamp burning 
within. 

We cannot stay to discuss the value of the authorities for 
or against the traditional story of the Invention of the Cross 
in 826; but there are two points which concern our present 
purpose. «First is the reference of St. Cyril of Jerusalem 
twenty years later to pieces of the Cross as having been 

1 St. Le. il, 21-39; ibid. xxvi (ed. Geyer, p. 77). 

2 Ibid., xlv, § 4 (ed. Geyer, p. 97). 

3 Ibid., xxiv, § 10; xxv, § 2 (ed. Geyer, pp. 73, 75) ; but Etheria 
distinguishes the basilica and the Anastasis, ibid., xxiv, § 8 (ed. 


Geyer, p. 73). Cf. H. T. F. Duckworth, The Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), p. 96. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 47 


distributed throughout the world+; and second, Etheria’s 
description of the Exposition of the Cross on Good Friday 
in the Chapel of Golgotha.? The bishop, she says, sat in a 
bishop’s seat (cathedra), having in front of him a table with 
a wooden frame (mensa_ sublinteata). A_ silver-gilt box 
(loculus) is brought in which is the wood of the holy cross. 
It is opened, and the wood of the cross and the titulus or 
inscription are placed upon the table. The bishop, still 
seated, places the tips of his fingers upon the wood, and the 
deacons standing around keep guard. The people, both the 
faithful (i.e. the baptized) and the catechumens approach 
one by one. Bending down they touch the wood, first with 
forehead, then with eyes, kiss it, and pass on. The guard of 
deacons was established, so Etheria tells us, because on one 
occasion some one took the opportunity in venerating the 
wood to bite offa piece and carry it away in his mouth. Asthe 
people moveon they pass a deacon who is holding Solomon’s 
ring and the horn with which kings were anointed. The horn 
they kiss, but a lacuna in the MS. prevents us from saying 
what they did to the ring. We shall do well, for reasons 
which will appear, to bear these details in mind, and also that 
when it is said that people go to Sion to pray at the column 
at which our Lord was scourged, the bare fact is mentioned 
without further description of the column. 

The date generally assigned to Etheria’s narrative is about 
385, 1.e. some sixty years after the Invention of the Cross 
and half a century after the dedication of Constantine’s 
great church at Jerusalem. No one who reads it can fail 
to be impressed with its historical value, and if so no apology 
is needed for the space given to it, since, if it can be relied 
upon, it affords a standard with which later narratives may 
be compared. We have to pass over nearly a century and a 
half till we come to the work known as the ‘Situation’ or 
‘Topography of the Holy Land’. Of its author, Theodosius, 
we know practically nothing save that he was in deacon’s 
orders and was possibly an archdeacon; that he has an 
interest in describing distances and an evident taste for 
recording marvels; and that from internal evidence he appears 
to have written about 4.p. 530. Bearing in mind what has 

1 Cyrill. Hierosol., Catech., iv, 10; x, 19; xiii, 4; to him its genuine- 


ness was beyond question. 
2S. Siluiae Peregy., xxxvii, §§ 1-3 (ed. Geyer, p. 88). 


48 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


been said about Etheria and quoted from her, let us look at 
Theodosius’ description of the scene. 

‘In the City of Jerusalem,’ he says, ‘at the Lord’s 
Sepulchre there is the place of Calvary ; there Abraham offered 
his own son as a whole burnt offering, and because the moun- 
tain is rocky, on the mountain itself, i.e. at the foot of the 
mountain itself, Abraham made an altar: above the altar the 
mountain rises, and to this mountain men climb by steps: 
there the Lord was crucified. From the Lord’s Sepulchre 
to the place of Calvary are paces fifteen in number; it is 
under one roof. From the place of Calvary? as far as to 
Golgotha are paces fifteen in number, where the Lord’s 
Cross wasfound. From Golgotha as far as to holy Sion, 
which is the mother of all churches, are paces in number 200 : 
which Sion our Lord Christ together with His apostles founded: 
it was the house of St. Mark the Evangelist. From holy 
Sion to the house of Caiaphas, which is now the Church of 
St. Peter, are more or less paces in number fifty. From the 
house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium of Pilate are more or less 
paces in number 100: there is the Church of St. Sophia ; 
near it St. Jeremiah was sent into the lake [or pit]. The 
column which was in the house of Caiaphas at which the Lord 
Christ was scourged is now in holy Sion : by the Lord’s com- 
mand the column itself followed, and even to-day it appears 
how while He was being scourged He embraced it : just as in 
wax, so His arms, His hands or fingers stuck into it, moreover 
His whole face, His chin, nose or eyes as though He marked 
them in wax.’ 

Two points in this account may be noticed. First, the 
writer is aware that the Column of Scourging is now in the 
Church of Sion. He has knowledge also that it was once in 
the house of Caiaphas. He solves the problem of its transfer 
by attributing this to a command of our Lord Himself. 
Further he describes it as bearing the marks of the Saviour’s 
face and hands, of which Etheria says nothing, though she 
too speaks of the column as being at Sion. Was she strangely 
unobservant or incurious (and one must admit that on a bare 


1 Theodosit De Situ Terrae Sanctae 7 (Itinera Hierosolymitana, 
ed. Geyer, pp. 140-1). 

2 The scribe or the author writes ‘ de Calvariae locum’. 

3 S. Stlwiae Peregr., xxxvii, § 1 (ed. Geyer, p. 88). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 49 


consideration of her narrative the inference might be that 
she had not seen it rather than that she had), or had Theo- 
dosius himself ever seen it? Is his work a literary tour de 
force, or was he one of those whom local custodians thought 
it a pity to disappoint of the sights which he clearly wished 
to see? The later Middle Ages had a different estimate of 
archidiaconal ingenuousness ; but we cannot help thinking 
on the whole that Theodosius had seen a good deal of what he 
describes, or if not is copying more or less faithfully the work 
of some one who had. ‘From the house of Pilate,’ he 
continues, ‘as far as to the Sheep Pool are paces more or less 
in number 100. There the Lord Christ healed the paralytic, 
whose bed is there up to this day.’! ‘In the place where the 
Lord was baptized there is a marble column, and on the column 
itself is made an iron cross; there too is the church of 
St. John Baptist which the Emperor Anastasius constructed.’ * 
“On Mount Olivet the Lord placed His shoulders upon a stone, 
and in this rock both His shoulders descended as in soft wax.’ 3 
Or again, if it be not too threadbare an example, he quotes 
Psalm exiv: ‘O sea wherefore art thou troubled, and thou 
Jordan wherefore art thou driven backward, and ye mountains 
wherefore did ye skip like rams and ye hills like the lambs of 
sheep ?’ And he adds that in the neighbourhood of Jordan 
are many little mountains and when the Lord descended to 
baptism the mountains themselves ambled before Him dancing, 
‘and to-day they have the appearance of leaping.’ * That 
is, of course, Imagination, butis it the imagination of the study ? 
On the other hand there are not a few passages which look like 
notes from a commonplace book filled with scraps of more 
or less inaccurate geographical information collected from 
many sources, and the work as we have it may be a combina- 
tion of observation and reading. In sucha collection a person 
making notes might well record just barely : ‘ In the province 
Cilicia, the city Tarsus, thence was Apollonius,’® as an 
interesting fact, whereas in a note of an actual visit a 
man of Theodosius’ turn of mind would never have omitted all 


1 Theodos., op. cit., viii (ed. Geyer, p. 142). 
2 Ibid., xx (ed. Geyer, p. 145). 
8 Ibid., xxi (ed. Geyer, p. 146). 
4 Ps. cxlii (cxiv), 5-6. Ibid., 22 (ed. Geyer, pp. 146- 7): 
ei bid.). 32) (ed. Geyer, np. 150). 
E 


50 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


reference to the most illustrious representative of no mean 
city. And the modern editor’s suggestion that in Apollonius 
or ‘ Apollius’ we are to find a corruption of ‘apostolus Paulus’ 
is perhaps best regarded as one of those emendations which 
we all of us make sometimes, but which we do our best to 
forget. 

Let us return now to the little book by an unknown author 
which is called the ‘ Breviarius’, i.e. ‘ Short Description of 
Jerusalem’. It is very short, barely 62 lines in all, and the 
date usually assigned to it is about the same as that of Theo- 
dosius, 527-30. It was pointed out by Dr. Bernard when he 
edited Theodosius for the ‘ Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society ’ 
that the latter does not mention Justinian’s building at 
Jerusalem and that he was clearly used by Gregory of Tours.+ 
We cannot therefore date Theodosius much later than 530 ; 
but this ‘Short Description’ may be a good deal earlier, 
possibly as early as 500 or even a little before. It would be 
tempting to give it in full, for it is fascinating to read. In 
his book The Dawn of Modern Geography, which has laid 
all students, whether they are always able to accept its 
conclusions or not, under a heavy debt of obligation, Professor 
Beazley summarizes one aspect of it by saying?: ‘Short as 
is the account, it is packed full of news for the relic seeker. 
He is told of the “* holy lance, made of the wood of the Cross, 
which shines at night like the sun in the glory of the day ”’ ; 
of the “* horn with which David and Solomon were anointed ”’ ; 
of the “‘ring of amber with which Solomon sealed his books”? ; 
of the ‘‘ earth of which Adam was formed ”’; of the ‘‘ reed and 
sponge, and the cup of the Last Supper ”’ ; of “* the stone with 
which Stephen was stoned’’; of the crown of thorns, the 
identical “‘lamp”’ of the upper chamber, and the “rod of 
scourging enclosed in a silver column’’.’? We will venture to 
add one passage: ‘ Thence you go to ‘ie house of Caiaphas 
where St. Peter made his denial: where there is a great 
basilica of St. Peter. Thence you go to the house of Pilate 
where he handed over the Lord to the Jews to be scourged : 
where there is a great basilica and there is there a chamber 


1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text ee Theodosius, translated by 
J. H. Bernard (London, 1893), p. 5 

> C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography (London: John 
Murray, 1897), i, p. 98. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 51 


(cubiculus) where they stripped Him and He was scourged, and 
it is called St. Sophia.’! This is in Sir Charles Wilson’s view the 
earliest reference to that church.? 

It will be impossible not to have been struck by the increase 
in the number of relics associated with our Lord which this 
‘Short Description’ mentions. Two at least which are 
included as being then at Jerusalem became later, as we know, 
the subject of other stories in other places—the Lance and the 
Holy Grail. But the writer does not mention the earth out 
of which Adam was formed as being preserved as a relic: 
he identifies the place of Adam’s creation, the place of the 
offering of Isaac, and the place of the Crucifixion as one and 
the same place—which is a very different thing.? One further 
point may be noted with a hope that even if the discussion 
may seem rather technical the result may not be uninteresting ; 
it relates to the ‘ring of amber with which Solomon sealed 
his books’. It will be remembered that the horn of anointing 
and Solomon’s ring are both mentioned by Etheria 4 ; but the 
‘ Breviarius’ contains two very remarkable passages on 
the subject of the ring. We will take the second first. 
*“* There,”? says the unknown writer, ‘is that horn wherewith 
David was anointed and Solomon, and that ring is there 
wherewith Solomon sealed ’—what? ‘ His books,’ says 
Professor Beazley ; ‘ his writings,’ according to Sir Charles 
Wilson. ‘And it is of amber.’ Now there are two MSS. of 
this little work, one at St. Gall, dated in 811; the other in the 
Ambrosian Library at Milan and belonging, apparently, 
though Geyer gives three different datings to it in different 
parts of his edition of the Itinera Hierosolymitana, to the 
twelfth century. The older MS., which is also the shorter, 
omits all reference to Solomon’s ring: according to accepted 
custom we should therefore prefer it, unless some special 
reason can be shown for the omission. We look at the other 
MS.: what it says is not ‘ books’ or ‘ writings ’—sermones— 
but ‘demones’, demons, ‘the ring with which Solomon sealed 


1 Breviarius de Hierosolyma (in Itinera WHierosol., ed. Geyer, 
Pp. 155). 

2 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition (London, 1890), p. v. 

8 Still less does the writer say that the Lance was ‘ made of the 
wood of the Cross ’, but ‘de ipsa facta est crux ’. 


4 Supra, p. 47. 


52 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


demons.’ The emendation is ingenious, but does not explain 
the corruption. We turn now to the first passage to which 
reference has briefly been made. The writer is describing 
the apse of Constantine’s basilica (we take the translation 
accepted by Sir Charles Wilson): ‘The apse itself [has] 
twelve marble columns round about it, and [what is] altogether 
incredible [there are] twelve urns of silver on the top of these 
columns.’ A reference to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine,} 
shows that the columns with their great silver jars on the top are 
mentioned with special attention as the Emperor’s gift, and 
we ask ourselves why in the world they should be described 
as ‘ altogether incredible ’, for we see nothing strange about 
them. But when we look at the manuscript authority 
for the passage in the ‘ Breviarius’ we do find something 
strange. The older, and shorter, MS. has omitted the whole 
passage and other words as well, apparently by homoesarcton, 
i.e. because the next sentence begins with the same word 
and the scribe’s eye skipped from the one to the other, as 
as has happened to most of us. But the later MS. reads: 
‘in the circuit [i.e. of the apse] are twelve marble columns, a 
thing altogether incredible, upon the columns themselves 
twelve water-pots, where Solomon sealed demons’. One 
secret at any rate is out. ‘Omnino incredibile ’—a thing 
altogether incredible—is the startled or scandalized observa- 
tion of a reader of a MS. older than the Ambrosian, added 
when he came upon what looked like the introduction of an 
incident which to us suggests the Arabian Nights. In the 
Ambrosian MS. it has crept into the text itself. On the 
whole we venture to think that the genii or jinn may be 
retained. 

We pass now to the Itinerary associated with the name 
of Antoninus of Placentia. Tradition has made hima martyr, 
and criticism has sometimes regarded him asaliar. Professor 
Beazley, who accepts the ordinary dating for his travels 
if genuine as A.D. 570, describes his work as sharing ‘ with 
Silvia’s [i.e. Etheria’s] peregrination the credit of being 
the most extensive, curious, and suggestive of all the pilgrim- 
records before the rise of Islam’.2. He adds, however, that 


1 Eusebius. Vita Constantini, iii, 38. 
2 Dawn of Modern Geography, i, 109. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 53 


‘in it we find the superstition and muddleheadedness of its 
class developed more fully than in any previous example’. 
It may be suggested that this is not a very profitable method 
of treating an author if we are trying to understand him or 
the age in which he lived. The Itinerary exists in two recen- 
sions and is not by Antoninus but by one of his companions. 
If in what follows some things are stated without comment, 
it must not be inferred that we accept the genuineness of all 
that the narrator says that he saw, but merely that in our 
opinion he is probably truthful in stating that he saw these 
things and that he is honest even if he makes mistakes. It 
must be remembered that there is at least some evidence 
that in the second half of the sixth century there had developed 
in the West considerable interest in relics, and in this as 
in other directions it must be confessed that demand has been 
known to create the supply. 

The motive of the journey is stated to be the following 
of the footsteps (vestigia) of Christ and beholding the scenes 
of the miracles of the holy prophets. As has been pointed 
out by Sir Charles Wilson and many others, the pilgrimage 
‘is remarkable for the extent of ground which it covers— 
Palestine, Sinai, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia’. It is 
hard to resist the temptation to discuss point by point the 
details of the journey and the writer’s criticisms upon the 
characteristics of the cities and other places which he visited. 
We can, however, only call attention to the kind of things 
which the traveller saw, we may add, if we like, which he hoped 
to see. Thus at Sarepta he sees the chamber of Elijah and 
his couch and the kneading-trough in which the widow of 
Sarepta mixed her dough. In this place, he adds, many 
offerings are made and many works of power (virtutes) will 
be done there. Sarepta, he tells us, is a town of moderate 
size, but very Christian (Christiana nimis).2 After visiting 
the monastery of Elisha he venerates at Diocesarea the pail 


“and basket of the Blessed Virgin : he is shown also the chair 


(cathedra) in which she was sitting at the time of the Visitation. 
The other recension calls the place Neocesarea: it is the 
modern Seffurieh where, according to Sir Charles Wilson, 


PAD. Dz. TIO, 
2 Antonini Placentinit Itinerarium (in Itinera Hierosol., ed. Geyer, 
Ppp. 160-61). 


54 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the birthplace of the Virgin is still shown.1 The party 
proceeds to Cana, where they visit the scene of the Marriage- 
feast. The narrator tells us that he reclined on the seat, i.e. 
the seat on which our Lord reclined, ‘ and there I unworthy 
wrote the names of my parents’ 2: some modern tourists, 
one may fear, would have written their own. In what follows 
the two recensions present a curious variation which illustrates 
very well what may often have happened in course of trans- 
mission. The one says: ‘Of these water-pots there are two 
there, and I filled one of them with wine and lifted it fullon my 
shoulder and offered it at the altar.’ So stated, the incident 
has at least verisimilitude; but forthe other recension it is too | 
commonplace. It says: ‘Of these water-pots there are 
two there, I filled one of them with water and I brought 
forth from it wine, and I lifted it full on my arm and offered 
it at the altar.’ ? The story has been spoilt, but the redactor 
has not understood why. At the fountain, presumably that 
from which the water came, the pilgrims bathed ‘ pro 
benedictione ’—for a blessing—a motive which determines 
a good many of their actions. 

At Nazareth the pilgrims see ‘in the synagogue’ the 
volume out of which our Lord learnt His A B C and the bench 
on which He sat with the other children—a bench which 
Christians can shake and lift but Jews cannot move, and which 
does not let itself be taken out of doors. The house of the 
Virgin has become a basilica where many benefits are derived 
from her garments ; and the beauty of the women of the place 
is attributed to her intervention. At Mount Tabor the 
pilgrims find three basilicas where ‘the disciple said 
‘* Let us make three tabernacles’’.’? It is at any rate more 
reasonable than a list of relics belonging to a much later 
period which purported to include some of the wood out of 
which St. Peter had proposed to make them. But here the 
reader will observe a very curious thing: all the MSS. say 
simply ‘the disciple’, except one which says ‘ Peter’. 
Nothing, we say to ourselves, is more natural: some scribe 
has given an identification and has put it into the text ; the 
vaguer reading is clearly to be preferred ;no one with‘ Peter ’ 
in the text before him would substitute the vaguer term 

+ Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition (London, 1896), p. 4. 


2 Itin., 4 (ed. Geyer, p. 161). 
* Cf. Geyer, op. cit., pp. 161, 196. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 55 


‘the disciple’. Clearly! But we may observe with a mixture 
of malicious enjoyment and a note of self-warning that the 
MS. which has the name ‘ Peter’ is a good deal older than 
the others whose reading we are commending; and we 
remember what we are always in danger of forgetting, that a 
later MS. sometimes preserves an earlier reading. 

It is interesting to notice that the narrator does not vouch 
for everything that is shown him. Im a passage where he 
makes a bad slip in confusing Samaria and Shechem he 
mentions what is said to be the vessel out of which our Lord 
drank at the well!. We smile when we find him mentioning 
the two fountains Jor and Dan, the streams of which united to 
form the River Jordan ; but it is wise to remember that even 
so great a scholar as St. Jerome does not disdain to mention 
the etymology, without however accepting it.” 

The tendency which we noticed in Theodosius, and which 
occurs in many other writers, to collect associations round 
a single spot, e.g. Calvary, is seen in this Itinerary in regard 
to the place of our Lord’s Baptism. Here, says the writer, 
was the scene of the passage of the Israelites, here the sons 
of the prophets lost the axe, here Elijah was taken up to 
heaven.? And here we in our turn pause to ask ourselves 
the question To what extent did the language of Scripture 
or an attempt to interpret it tend to create stories? The 
question is, as we know, of considerable interest in connexion 
with St. Matthew’s Gospel, but it has a far wider bearing. 
At the risk of seeming obscurantist or worse we are bound to 
say that we can find singularly few cases in which such an 
explanation seems to have reasonable probability. An 
example may be taken in regard to which judgment 
is not likely to be affected by ulterior considerations. 
Kucherius in the fifth century quotes apparently from 
Josephus a statement that the city of Jerusalem in the midst 
of Judaea was regarded by the learned as the navel of the 
whole region. We know that in later writers, as in some 


1 Itin. 6 (ed. Geyer, p. 162). 

2 Ibid., 7 (ed. Geyer, p. 163). Cf. S. Hieronymi Comm. in Matt. xvi, 13. 

3 Itin. 9 (ed. Geyer, p. 165). 

4 Eucherit quae fertuy De Situ Hierusolimitanae urbis atque 
ipsius Iudaeae Epistola ad Faustum Presbyterum (in Itinera Hierosol., 
ed. Geyer, p. 134), ‘ quasi umbilicus regionis totius, ut prudentibus 
placuit, nuncupatur.’ The passage is not contained in the Palestine 
Pilgrims’ Text Society edition. 


56 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


earlier ones, Jerusalem and in Jerusalem Golgotha was 
regarded as the navel of the world. ‘Two texts of Ezekiel,’ 
says Professor Beazley, ‘ and two of the Psalms were supposed 
to prove that Jerusalem, where God had ‘“‘ worked salvation 
in the midst of the earth’? was this central point. ‘‘ For 
thus saith the Lord, This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the 
midst of the nations and countries that are round about.’’’+ 
We are familiar with the consequences which the idea had 
in the drawing of primitive maps; but even here, it may be 
thought, Scripture was cited to confirm an opinion which 
originated from other considerations but which it did not 
create. In any case it is absolutely certain that the passages 
quoted were not regarded as of coercive, nor even as of con- 
clusive, authority by every one. 

We return now to the Itinerary of Antoninus at the point 
from which we digressed, and in doing so we observe the 
elaborate system of guest-houses or hospices, Xenodochia, for 
pilgrims and for those suffering from leprosy and other diseases, 
of which it affords evidence. Before the Persian and the Arab 
conquests Palestine must have contained a very large number 
of these ‘inns’, situated at natural halting places for travellers 
or at places to which by reason of their associations large 
bodies of people would be likely to congregate. In those at 
Jerusalem which are mentioned in the Itinerary the food 
was cooked, we are told, with dew from Hermon which 
descended there, and the statement is regarded as confirmed 
by the words of the Psalmist, ‘ Like as the dew from Hermon 
which descended on Mount Sion.’ 2? What the words were 
regarded as supporting was the view that the dew which 
descended there and with which the food was cooked was 
dew from Hermon and not from elsewhere, and the narrator 
tells us that it was collected by doctors (medici) and was good 
for the healing of diseases. 

The Itinerary is a perplexing work, for as we read it our 
opinion changes almost from page to page. The writer tells 
us that Scythopolis is on a mountain,’ which is certainly not 
the case, and that nothing floats in the Dead Sea nor can a 
man swim in it 4—a statement which is far more startling 

1 Dawn of Modern Geography, i, p. 338. 
2 Ps. xxxii (xxxiii), 3. tin. 9 (ed. Geyer, p. 165). 


5 Ibid., 8 (ed. Geyer, p. 164). 
* Ibid., 10 (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 57 


and has given rise to injurious reflexions on his veracity 
or the genuineness of his work as a record of observation. 
It is not, however, clear that the inference drawn from the 
blunder need be more unfavourable than that from the 
famous story of the problem of the fish which Charles II 
is said to have propounded to the Royal Society; though 
we may be safe in conjecturing that the writer had not made 
the necessary experiment. On the other hand the account 
of the obelisk and the wooden cross at Jordan, where the 
writer claims to have spent Epiphany, seems to represent 
something that he had seen !; and we may count it as a point 
to his credit that when he gets to Jericho, which he compares, 
like Galilee, to Paradise, he does not claim to have been shown 
then or later the two pence mentioned in the story of the 
Good Samaritan, to whom indeed he does not refer. But 
what are we to make of the story of the ‘ Ager Domini ’— 
the Lord’s Field?? He did not originate it. Even in the 
period with which we are dealing it is found in the narrative 
of Theodosius, who says that ‘the Field of the Lord in 
Galgala is watered from the Fountain of Elisha ; it produces 
six bushels more or less. In the month of August half of 
the field is ploughed, and there is a crop at Easter from 
which the oblation is taken for Holy Thursday and Easter 
Day. And when that is cut, the other half is ploughed 
and there is a second crop. ‘There too is the vine which the 
Lord planted, which vine bears fruit at Pentecost ; from this 
the oblation [i.e. of wine] is taken. And so from the field 
as from the vine the produce is transmitted at the proper 
season to Constantinople.’? At the beginning of his treatise 
Theodosius tells us what the Lord’s Field is: ‘ there,’ he says, 
‘the Lord Jesus Christ ploughed one furrow with His own hand.’ 
To this, according to Dr. Bernard, one MS. adds: ‘ and sowed 
it. And there is a monastery, and in the monastery 300 
monks, who own the field ; and the field yields a crop every 
third year, and every crop yields eight bushels.’ ° It is 
clear that we have evidence of two different traditions, for 


Itim,, 11. (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 

Ibid., 13 (ed. Geyer, p. 168). 

Theodos., op. cit., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 145). 
Ibid., x (ed. Geyer, p. 137). 

Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition, p. 7. 


a FF © wD 


58 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the reading is not one whichcan be dismissed as mere invention. 
Let us turn to the Itinerary. We learn there that before the 
basilica not far from Jordan, which contains the stones taken 
up from Jordan by the children of Israel, is a ‘campus’, the 
‘ Ager Domini’, in which ‘ the Lord sowed with His own hand, 
bearing seed up to three bushels : moreover it is reaped twice 
in the year ; it is never sown, but grows of itself. Further, 
it is gathered in February, and therefrom Communion is 
made at Easter. When it has been reaped it is ploughed 
and again reaped along with other harvests : it is subsequently 
ploughed again and left alone’.t. The story is consistent 
enough to suggest the knowledge of a real field to which 
these stories attached, inconsistent enough to suggest doubts 
as to the original form of the story, but not as to the fact 
that there was a story. 

We pass by the mention of the tomb of Absalom ? which 
is a new feature here first introduced, of the tree into which 
Zaccheeus climbed, and of the fig-tree on which Judas hanged 
himself. In Gethsemane is a basilica which, the narrator 
tells us, they say was the house of the Blessed Virgin and 
the place where she was taken (sublata) from the body.? 
Of the appearance of the Holy Sepulchre there is a most 
striking account. The rock of the Tomb has by this time 
been so much adorned with gold and precious stones that 
its colour cannot be distinguished. ‘ From iron rods hang 
armlets, bracelets, necklaces, rings, coronets, waist-bands, 
sword-belts, crowns of emperors made of gold or precious 
stones, and a great number of ornaments given by empresses.’ 
‘The Tomb itself,’ the writer adds, ‘is like the winning- 
post of a course, covered with silver.’4 This again may be 
regarded as a comparison suggested by personal observation. 
In the account of the Veneration of the Cross at Golgotha 
there is another note which suggests genuineness. The 
narrator says that he adored it and kissed it,> but not that he 
handled it: that, if the earlier description which we have 
mentioned represents a real custom, would not have been 


1 Itin., 13 (ed. Geyer, pp. 168-9). 
* Ibid., ro (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 

8 Itin., 17 (ed. Geyer, p. 170). 

4 Ibid., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171, cf. 203-4). 

> “adorauimus et osculauimus,’ ibid., 20 (ed. Geyer, p. 172). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 59 


allowed. But if he did not do so, this may account for the 
difficulty caused by his statement that the Cross was of 
nut-wood, in regard to which Sir Charles Wilson notes that there 
are no hazel-trees near Jerusalem and that the modern tradition 
is that the Cross was of olive-wood, though it may have been 
of oak. The titulus or superscription, which the narrator 
gives in the form ‘ Hic est rex Judaeorum ’, he says that he 
not only kissed but held in his hand. The story is, however, 
embellished, though not improved, by an account of the star 
which comes and stands over the place of the Cross when it 
is brought out of its receptacle and of the effect upon flasks 
of oil which are brought that the Cross may touch them and 
which boil over in consequence. The relics which the writer 
mentions are the sponge, from which he says that he drank 
water, the reed and the Holy Grail which was made, it would 
seem, of onyx, a painting of the Blessed Virgin, her girdle 
and her head band. 

In the Basilica of Sion, which was the house of St. James, 
he sees the ‘ lapis angularis’’ or corner-stone and the Column 
of the Flagellation. The latter shows the mark of our Lord’s 
breast, of His two hands, the palms, and the fingers. These 
are measured and the measurements taken as a remedy for 
various sicknesses,? a custom which was certainly common 
in other connexions elsewhere in the later Middle Ages. It 
will be noticed that the writer says nothing of the appearance 
of the Face, of which we have found mention earlier. There 
is seen also the ‘ horn with which kings were anointed and 
David’, but nothing is said of Solomon’s ring. Mention 
is made of the crown of thorns, the lance, the stones (not, as 
before, the stone) with which St. Stephen was stoned, a 
little column on which was set the cross of St. Peter on which 
he was crucified at Rome—which is in the circumstances a 
strange relic to find here—the chalice used by the Apostles 
at masses (missae) after the Resurrection and, the writer adds, 
‘many other marvels (miracula) which I do not recollect.’ 3 
It seems hard that the frankness of this last remark should 
have been used as an argument against his narrative. 


1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition, p. 17. 

2 “Ita ut pro singulis languoribus mensura tollatur exinde,’ Itin. 22 
(ed. Geyer, p. 174). 

s “Et multa alia miracula, quae non recolo,’ ibid. 


60 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Perhaps the most startling thing in the Itinerary is the 
mention a little later of a picture of our Lord in the Judgment 
Hall of Pilate, a picture which is said to have been painted 
from life. That such a picture, however, whatever its date, 
may have been there it is impossible to deny. The description 
given is of a person of ordinary height, a handsome face, 
hair inclined to curl, a beautiful hand with long fingers, a 
beautiful small delicate foot.1 The absence of a beard is 
noteworthy for reasons which will at once suggest themselves 
to students of iconography ; but the whole description is of 
importance, for if it is genuine it antedates by nearly two 
centuries what Mr. G. F. Hill describes ? as the earliest literary 
representation of our Lord, that of John of Damascus, who 
died about 754. 

It must be remembered in our judgment of such a writer 
as that of the Itinerary that we are dealing with a man 
who goes for example to a place where it was said that Samson 
slew 1,000 men with a jawbone of an ass: from that jawbone 
sprang forth a fountain which continues to this day: he has 
seen it. He goes on to the place ‘ where Isaiah was sawn 
asunder or is buried’: the saw is preserved: he has seen it.* 
It is safer to assume that such a man has really seen the 
things that he says he has seen, whatever we may think of 
his credulity. But if so we can accept his evidence when he 
tells us of accommodation provided in hospices in his day for 
as many as 3,000 pilgrims at a time, though of course he may 
have been no better judge of large numbers than a modern 
speaker who believed himself to have addressed 6,000 people 
in a building of which the utmost capacity is 1,650. And with 
this we must leave him: it is not to his dispraise that we leave 
him with regret. 

When we come to Bishop Arculf, almost exactly a century 
later (A.D. c. 670) we find ourselves confronted with a narrative 
not written nor purporting to be written by himself but by a 
man more famous—Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba. 
Arculf’s see is unknown, but Adamnan tells us that he was 


1 Itin., 23 (ed. Geyer, p. 175). 
Gur Hill, The Medallic Portraits of Christ (Clarendon Press, 1920), 


. 9. 
® Itin., 32 (ed. Geyer, p. 179). 
4 Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 180). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 61 


of Gallic race, that he spent nine months in Jerusalem, and 
that he gave the account of what he had seen in response to 
a request, Adamnan acting as scribe.1. The narrative which 
we have is divided into three books and covers a wide area, 
for Arculf would seem to have visited not only Jerusalem 
and the whole of Palestine but Damascus, ‘Tyre, 
Constantinople, and Alexandria—a city so large that it takes 
a whole October day to traverse it—as well as the Nile Valley. 
About all these scenes he has many interesting details to relate 
as well as of the volcanoes of Lipari and other marvels. 
Adamnan describes him as ‘ uerax index’, a truthful guide, 
and, though there may not have been at Iona where the work 
was compiled great facilities for checking his statements, there 
is evidence that there were at any rate some, and there can be 
no doubt of the deepness of the impression which Arculf himself 
made upon Adamnan. For the later student the impression is 
enhanced as he looks at the plans of the Churches of the Holy 
Sepulchre and of Sion, of the Church of the Ascension on the 
Mount of Olives and of Jacob’s Well which Arculf drew for 
his host with his own hand on a wax tablet and which 
Adamnan reproduced in his manuscript. To the account of 
Jerusalem an additional importance is given by the fact 
that it is later than the attacks of the Persians and the Arabs. 
If in the narrative itself there are things that make us wonder, 
we must remember, as before, that the narrator is not therefore 
necessarily either dishonest or ridiculous. When, for example, 
he says that the noise of a volcano is louder on Fridays and 
Saturdays than on other days,? we shall infer, should we 
hesitate to accept the statement, not that he had never seen 
the voleano but that like many in a later age he had made a 
generalization based on the observation of insufficient 
instances. Probably everyone will concede so much, but 
it is fair to apply the same argument to the account of the 
yearly purification of the streets of Jerusalem on the night 
of September 15th by the fall of an abundance of rain from the 
clouds. This is not mere trifling, for the credit attaching 

1 Adamnani De Locis Sanctis, i, Praef. (in Itinera Hierosolym., 
ed) Gever: 1p." 227); 

2 Reproduced in Geyer’s edition, Jtin. Hierosolym., pp. 231, 250, 271. 

3 ‘Maius sexta feria et sabbato intonare uidetur’, Adamnani 


De Locis Sanctis, iii, 6 (ed. Geyer, p. 296). 
4 Ibid., i, r (ed. Geyer, p. 225). 


62 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to the author’s veracity, if not always to his judgment, 
is of the highest importance, since he gives detailed descrip- 
tions, e.g. as to the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
based, as Adamnan states, on actual measurements. ‘Thus 
he gives the length of the Sepulchre as seven feet : and he also 
corrects what he designates as false opinions, e.g. that the 
Sepulchre is not like a bed of rock but has a projection 
dividing the slab in two.1 

As we have seen, Arculf’s visit to Jerusalem was made 
subsequently to the conquests of 614 and 637. The Church 
of the Holy Sepulchre that he saw can therefore be only a 
restoration of Constantine’s Church. There are real difficulties 
in the account which he gives, notably as to the three walls,? 
and there are discrepancies with the other stories, though 
some of them are not inexplicable in view of the course 
of events. At the time of the visit of Antoninus and _ his 
companions the stone which had closed the Sepulchre was, 
if the narrative be genuine, and we see no special reason to 
doubt it, in front of the entrance?: now, it is represented 
as having been cut in two and made into two altars.* In 
Antoninus’ time the Sepulchre was covered with silver®; in 
Arculf’s it was covered with choice marble ®; at the present 
day it is also lined with marble. When Arculf saw it—if 
we may trust his statement, as it seems reasonable to do— 
the Sepulchre was entirely unadorned within: the natural 
rock of two colours, red and white, was visible and still bore 
the marks of tools,?7 whereas, in spite of the arguments of 
Mr. H. T. F. Duckworth to the contrary, we find it hard to 
believe from the description of it in the time of Antoninus 
that any part of it was then visible, though the passages to 
which Mr. Duckworth calls attention are difficult to explain if 
such a view be taken.§ Our safest inference would seem to 


1 Adamn., i, 2 (ed. Geyer, p. 229). 

* Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 227), cf. Duckworth, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
pp. 101-3 

§ «Ante os monumenti,’ Jtin., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171). 

4 Adamnani De Locis Sanctis, i, 3 (ed. Geyer, p. 232). 

> ‘Ipsum monumentum sic quasi in modum metae coopertus ex 
argento sub solas aureos,’ Itin., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171). 

® ‘Totum extrinsecus electo tegitur marmore,’ Adamn., op. cit., i, 2 
(ed. Geyer, p. 228). 

7 Ibid., i, 3 (ed. Geyer, p. 232). 

® Church of the Holy Sepulchre, p. 112. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 63 


be that in Arculf’s time the Sepulchre had not regained in the 
course of the restoration by Bishop Modestus all its former, 
perhaps rather garish, magnificence. 

The place where the True Cross had stood is spoken of 
by Arculf as occupied by a great cross of silver. Among the 
relics which he saw was the Holy Grail, a cup of saver with 
two small handles, one on either side, and holding the measure 
of a Gallic sextiary i.e. a quart. It contained the sponge 
that was put to our Lord’s lips and it is stated to be the same 
chalice that our Lord used with His disciples after the 
Resurrection. The cup was contained in a perforated case 
through which Arculf both touched and kissed it.t There, 
too, are the soldier’s spear—the lance—and the sacred 
napkin placed on our Lord’s Head in the Sepulchre: this 
‘sudarium ’, of about eight feet long, is a new feature, and a 
story is told of its history for which the testimony of the whole 
people of Jerusalem is alleged.? Associated with it is a 
story of another linen cloth seen by Arculf. This was the 
work, as it is said (ut fertur), of the Blessed Virgin herself, 
and had inworked in it the image of our Lord and small 
representations of the twelve Apostles. It seems from the 
description to have been red on one side and green on the other, 
and it will be noticed that, while Arculf vouches for the fact 
that it is to be seen there, he does not commit himself to the 
story of its origin.® 

We come now to a feature of which the interpretation 
is certainly wrong—the column in the midst of the city which 
is said to prove that Jerusalem is situated in the middle of 
the earth. What will strike the reader, we think, with 
regard to it is the evidence that is adduced in support of this 
view. ‘That evidence is the physical fact that at the summer 
solstice it casts no shadow: it is not merely the occurrence 
in Psalm Ixxii (Ixxiv), 12, of the words: ‘God our king 
before the ages has wrought salvation in the midst of the 
earth.’ Itis true that Arculf, or Adamnan, quotes that text ; 
but it is the confirmation of a fact which is deemed to be 
proved by the results of observation, however interpreted. 

1 Adamn., op. cit., i, 7 (ed. Geyer, pp. 234-5). 

2 Ibid., 1, 9 (ed. Geyer, pp. 235-8). 

3 Ibid., i, 10 (ed. Geyer, p. 239). 

4*‘Quae mediterranea et umbilicus terrae dicitur,’ Adamn., 
op. cit., i, 11 (ed. Geyer, pp. 239-40). 


64 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


As in the account of the peregrination of Antoninus and 
his companions the tomb of the Virgin is mentioned, and 
mentioned as being empty—the body has been taken away 
(sublata). Arculf adds that the manner, the time, and the 
agents of its removal or in what place it awaits the Resurrec- 
tion, no one, as it is said (ut fertur), can know for certain. 
In the Itinerary of Antoninus again mention is made of the 
three ‘ resting-places ’ (accubita) of our Lord at Gethsemane? : 
Arculf is shown the stone upon which our Lord knelt there to 
pray ; it was impressed with the marks of His knees as in very 
soft wax,* just as later in the round Church of the Ascension 
Arculf sees the marks of our Lord’s feet, marks which refuse 
to let themselves be covered with marble, and although the 
faithful carry the earth away, i.e. as relics, the imprint still 
remains.* Arculf does not give this as tradition but as fact, 
and in relation to the Church of the Ascension itself he tells 
Adamnan that it is open to the sky because on Ascension 
Day at the hour of the Lord’s Ascension there comes a wind 
there strong enough to carry away one covering: he has 
himself experienced its force.® 

It will be obvious to anyone who knows the stories at first hand 
that we have been dealing only with quite a limited selection, 
and even that has had to be confined in the main to Jerusalem. 
Anyone who is tempted to pursue the subject further, as it 
deserves, will find most interesting food for reflexion in the 
successive stages of the story of Bethlehem as it appears 
in the several narratives, and also of the places specially 
connected with the lives of the patriarchs. Arculf saw the 
tombs of the four Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and 
Adam, buried with their feet towards the south, and the 
inferior memorials, ‘ uiliores et minores’ of three women &— 
a curiously Eastern touch, for the women are Sarah, Rebecca 
and Leah. Poor Mother Eve receives no mention, and 
Rachael, of course, is buried elsewhere with the ‘ titulus ’ 
which her husband placed over her still to be seen.?. Arculf’s 


Adamn., i, 12 (ed. Geyer, p. 240). 

Itin., 17 (ed. Geyer, p. 170). 

Adamn., op. cit., i, 12 (ed. Geyer, pp. 240-1). 
Ibid., i, 23 (ed. Geyer, pp. 246-7). 

Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 249). 

Ibid., ii, 10 (ed. Geyer, pp. 260-1). 

Ibid., ii, 7 (ed. Geyer, pp. 258-9). 


sy oQ ape © wD 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 65 


account of the ‘oak’ of Mamre, under which Abraham 
received his angelic visitors, is really notable. He is talking 
about something which Adamnan, who in this as in several 
other instances shows himself an intelligent student of 
St. Jerome, regards as of considerable importance and about 
which he asks the Bishop numerous questions. Neither of 
them pledges himself to the statement that it is as old as the 
world, a statement which is quoted; but Adamnan ascertains 
by his questions what Arculf actually saw, the size of what 
remains of it, and the fact—in itself probable enough—that 
chips of it were carried away as relics. It is true that, as 
has been pointed out, the Jewish and Christian traditions 
differed as to the situation of the tree,? and there is the same 
kind of difference of opinion as there is as to the site of 
Augustine’s Oak ; but so far as Arculf’s narrative is concerned 
our opinion of its value is enhanced rather than diminished 
by the character of the account that he gives here, as in 
other scenes which he describes. 

The reader will perhaps have noticed that in his account 
of what he saw at Jerusalem Arculf is not represented as 
stating that he saw the True Cross. The reason of this is 
equally plain. Rightly or wrongly Arculf, if we accept 
his account as genuine, firmly believed that in his own 
time it was preserved at Constantinople and that he had 
himself seen it there: at least that seems to be a legitimate 
inference from Adamnan’s narrative. It is said to be 
preserved in a magnificent round church there. In the church 
is an exceedingly large and very beautiful aumbry (armarium) 
which encloses a wooden box (capsa) which has a wooden 
cover. This shrine is exposed once a year for three days 
continuously, beginning on Maundy Thursday, on a golden 
altar two cubits long and one broad, and is then venerated 
on each day by a different class of persons, beginning with 
the Emperor. It is noted that there are not two but three 
short pieces of wood in the Cross, and that when the box is 
opened there is omitted a wonderful fragrance, as though all the 
flowers had been collected in it. The cause of this odour 


1 Adamn., op. cit., ii, 11 (ed. Geyer, pp. 261-2). 

4 The Pilgrimage of Arculfus, translated and annotated by J. R. 
Macpherson, ‘ Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society’ (London, 1895), 
PP- 33-4- 


F 


66 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


is a liquid that distils from the pieces of wood, one drop of 
which recovers the sick no matter what the disease from 
which they are suffering.1 And here we must take leave 
of Arculf, however unwillingly, with the parting note that 
in the account of St. George, which follows, has been seen 
the first story of the English patron saint which can be 
regarded as having obtained circulation in England. 

The eighth century yields much less than its predecessors 
to the student of narratives of pilgrim adventure. It was 
inevitable that this should be so, for with the advance of 
Moslem conquest the incentives no less than the facilities 
for Eastern travel were diminished. And though the modern 
historian looking back may feel justified in saying that * from 
the government of the Isaurian emperors a new principle 
of life had sprung which was to enrich the world for ever ’, 
the would-be pilgrim of the eighth century was more likely 
to have heard that the possibility of adequate protection 
was negligible, and that the Ummayaid Caliphate, which 
reached its period of crowning success under Walid (705-15) 
and had established its control over Spain in one direction 
and penetrated to Northern India and almost to China in 
another, had gained a firm hold on Syria and established a 
domination of which a great mosque at Damascus and the 
famous Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem were significant 
evidence. It is to the credit of the man who is perhaps 
the first, certainly the most famous, of early pilgrims of 
English race that with the enthusiasm of youth which alone 
could make the idea either conceivable in itself or possible 
of achievement he should have undertaken about 722 so 
formidable and hazardous a journey. 

Willibald, later Bishop of Eichstadt but the nephew of 
St. Boniface, possibly of Kentish birth, certainly of English 
education, is the promoter of an adventure which may justly 
be called heroic, and his Hodeporicon is the record of his 
journey.2. Like Arculf, he did not write it himself, but 


1 Adamn., op. cit., iii, 3 (ed. Geyer, pp. 286-8). 

2 Printed by D’Achery and Mabillon in Acta Sanctorum Ordinis 
S. Benedicti, Saec. III, pars. ii (Paris, 1672), pp. 367-83; (Venice, 1734), 
PP. 332-53; in the series of Itimeva Hierosolymitana, published by the 
Societé de l’Orient Latin (Geneva, 1879) from the text of T. A. 
Tobler; and in English, slightly abbreviated, by the Palestine Pilgrims’ 
Text Society (London, 1895). 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 67 


dictated it, only not in this case to a learned abbot of Iona 
but to one of the most ingenuous and delightful of nuns. 
She is, she assures us, an unworthy child of the Saxon race, 
a poor specimen of humanity (quasi homuncula) in character 
and attainments, a woman and tainted with the fragile 
helplessness of her sex (fragilt sexus iwmbecillitate corrupti- 
bilis), and she is writing for the great Bishop’s spiritual 
children, reverend priests, elegant deacons of distinguished 
ability, abbots and monks, plucking like a wilful uninstructed 
child a few flowers, ete. After telling the story of the 
saintly bishop’s early life she relates the pilgrimage in which 
he persuaded his unwilling father and his brother to join. 
They set out from Hamelmouth, near the modern Southamp- 
ton, and make their way to Rouen and thence through 
Liguria to Lucca, where the father dies.1. The nun’s know- 
ledge of geography is a little vague or her mind confused, 
for she makes the pilgrims cross the Alps apparently after 
leaving Lucca. However, they reach Rome, escaping military 
violence, and after returning thanks at the Basilica of St. 
Peter proceed by sea from Naples to Reggio and so to Sicily 
where, she assures us, an eruption of Etna is wont to be 
stayed by placing the veil of St. Agatha upon it.2. From 
Syracuse they cross the Adriatic to the south of the Morea 
and thence proceed by way of Chios and Samos to Ephesus. 
The places visited in Asia are not easy to identify, but they 
include Patara, and after much privation the pilgrims sail 
to Cyprus. After further journeyings they reach by sea 
the territory of the Saracens and find themselves at Emesa 
where the party of eight is cast into prison. Through the 
influence of a Spaniard they are at last set free and travel 
100 miles to Damascus where they stay a week. Thence 
they proceed on foot to Nazareth and Cana, where is one 
of the six water-pots used at the Marriage-feast and where 
they partake of the wine which it contains.? The narrative 
as it brings them to Jerusalem is full of Scriptural references 
but singularly free from embellishments. At Galgala the 
pilgrims see the stones taken up by the Israelites when 
crossing the Jordan five miles away, and the spring of the 
1 Vita S. Willibaldi, c. 9 [8]. 


2 Ibid., 12 [10]. 
asi Did. 10 [13]. 


68 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


prophet Elisha. At Jerusalem it is really noteworthy 
that the narrative records that Calvary was once outside 
the walls and so continued till the time of Helena, who 
included it within the city.1 A difficulty is thus solved 
which does not seem to have occurred to the other pilgrims 
we have been studying. The Sepulchre is described as 
cut out of the rock and having a ‘ lectus’ inside on which 
our Lord’s Body lay. Nothing is said of its ornamentation 
save that over the Sepulchre is constructed a marvellous 
house. Willibald visits also the Church called Holy Sion, 
and mention is made of a cross before the gate of the city 
where the Jews had tried to deprive the Eleven Apostles 
of the Body of the Blessed Virgin after her death: she had 
died in Holy Sion, and angels came and took her from the 
hands of the Apostles and carried her to Paradise. Her 
memorial (not, it is stated, her resting-place) is in the Valley 
of Jehoshaphat. There is a striking description of the Church 
of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, and another of a 
‘ gloriosa domus ’—the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. 
At Afframia they see the tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
—Adam has disappeared from the list—and of their wives. 
We cannot stay to trace the further wanderings ; but four 
visits in all are recorded as paid to Jerusalem. On the last 
the future Bishop bought himself some balsam and filled 
a calabash with it.2 Into the calabash he inserted a hollow 
stem which he had filled with petroleum: he cut it level 
with the opening and then closed it. In consequence when 
they came to Tyre and the citizens searched their baggage 
to see if they had anything hidden (aliquid absconditum) in 
it, they found the calabash which Willibald had and smelt 
the petroleum ; but the balsam they did not find. Had they 
found anything, says the nun, they would speedily have 
punished them with martyrdom. But they did not find 
anything, and so let them go. We must confess that we 
do not know what would have been regarded as the appro- 
priate comment upon this remarkable example of sanctified 
ingenuity ; for the good nun of Heidenheim makes no 
observation at all but merely goes on to record that it took 
the pilgrims from St. Andrew’s Day to the week before 


1’ Via, 18. 2 Ibid., 23 [28]. 


CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 69 


the following Easter, i.e. over three months at the least, 
to sail from the coast of Palestine to Constantinople. There 
they saw the tombs of St. Andrew, St. Timothy and St. Luke, 
and also that of St. John Chrysostom. After a stay of two 
years they went to Niceea, where the church was a round 
church like that of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives 
and where the great Council of 318 bishops had been held 
some four centuries before. In the church there were the 
pictures of the bishops who had been present at the Council. 
After returning to Constantinople the party made their way 
back to Italy two years later, i.e. apparently in 728, passing 
on the voyage the Island of Vulcan (Lipari)—the Hell of 
Theoderic—which furnishes the most vigorous piece of 
description in the whole narrative. In Italy Willibald goes to 
Monte Cassino : it was seven years since he had left Rome and 
ten since he had first left his native land. After ten years more, 
spent in the observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, he was 
sent by Pope Gregory III to join St. Boniface in instructing 
the nation of the Franks,? and at last, at the age of 41, was 
consecrated to the episcopate at Salzburg,? to begin a new 
stage in a most eventful career. 

Ithas been said of the Treatise upon the Holy Places compiled 
by the Venerable Bede that he traverses practically the whole 
range of the narrative of Arculf, but in about one-third of 
the space. As one looks back over the present study, one 
can but admire once more by comparison the marvellous 
skill of the Father of English History. And yet, in spite of 
all the omissions, and even it may be the misinterpretations 
as well as the defects, it is impossible not to hope that at 
least something of the glamour and fascination of these early 
narratives of Christian travel may survive even the clumsiness 
of our modern handling. If it tempts some at any rate to 
read for themselves in the pages of the Itinera Hierosolymitana 
or of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society the fuller story 
and in the work of Professor Beazley on ‘The Dawn of 
Modern Geography’ a critical discussion from a somewhat 
different point of view, the labour will at any rate not have 
been expended in vain. 


1 Vita, 24 (30). 2 Third, 27: (34); 
3 Ibid., 29 (37). 


CHAPTER IV 
THE VIKING AGE 


By Professor ALLEN Mawer, M.A. 


OS) the great movements which have contributed to the 

making of modern Europe, the Viking movement, 
though certainly among the greatest, is probably the least 
familiar to the majority of historical students, professional 
and amateur alike. The Vikings can be shown to be pioneers 
in geographical discovery, chief among the founders of 
modern commerce, the possessors of a literature of unsur- 
passed value, men endowed with the highest technical and 
artistic skill, but all this is a discovery of the last fifty to a 
hundred years. How is it that the age of the Vikings has 
thus been neglected and its importance so long unrecognized ? 

The chief cause lies probably in the general misconception 
of the character and meaning of the movement. Our know- 
ledge of the Vikings was, until the last half century or so, 
drawn almost entirely from the works of medieval . Latin 
chroniclers, writing for the most part in monasteries and other 
kindred schools of learning which had only too often felt 
the devastating hand of the Viking raiders. They naturally 
regarded them as little better than pirates, and they were 
never tired of expatiating upon their cruelty, their violence, 
and their general love of anarchy. It is only during the last 
fifty years that we have been able to revise our ideas of the 
early Scandinavian peoples and to form a juster conception 
of the part which they played in European civilization. 
The change has come about chiefly in two ways. First, 
and chronologically the earlier, the literature of the Scan- 
dinavian peoples is no longer a sealed book to us. Northern 
literature has been a subject of interest to us ever since 
the days of the poet Gray with his Descent of Odin and The 
Fatal Sisters, but the general popularizing of the literature 


THE VIKING AGE 71 


of the North belongs to the latter half of the nineteenth 
century when, to mention but a few names, we have the great 
work of William Morris in translation and adaptation of 
the old legends and sagas, of Sir George Dasent in renderings 
of such great stories as that of Burnt Njal, and lastly of 
such scholars as Vigfusson and York Powell who devoted 
themselves chiefly to the interpretation of the ancient language 
and its literature. Through the work of such writers as these 
we have come to recognize that Scandinavia, and more 
particularly Norway and Iceland, possesses a heroic literature 
which can on its own merits stand side by side with the 
great literatures of Greece and Rome and fear nothing 
from the comparison. 

Secondly, and it is on this point that one would wish 
to lay special stress here, archeology has within the 
last half century become an exact science, and the work 
of archeologists, generally themselves of Scandinavian 
birth, upon the rich finds which have been brought 
to light during the last century or so in the Scandinavian 
kingdoms has given us a vast body of concrete fact with the 
aid of which we can reconstruct the civilization of the Viking 
period far more satisfactorily than we could from the sagas 
alone. 

The period of Scandinavian history, and indeed of the 
history of Northern Europe generally, to which the term 
** Viking ” has been applied extends roughly from the middle 
of the eighth century to the end of the first quarter of the 
eleventh century. The commencement of the period was 
marked by a series of piratical raids upon the coasts of 
England, Western Scotland, and Ireland, and upon Frankish 
territory. Its climax was reached when in the course of the 
ninth century Scandinavian kingdoms were established in 
Ireland, Man, and the Hebrides, and in the Northern, Midland, 
and Eastern districts of England, and its close was marked 
by the consolidation of the Scandinavian kingdoms in the 
tenth century under Olaf Tryggvason in Norway, Olaf 
Skotkonung in Sweden, and, greatest of all, King Knut in 
Denmark, who for a brief time held the whole of Scandinavia 
and the British Isles in one vast confederacy. 

What were the causes which gave rise to this great Viking 
movement? There is an old belief among the Scandinavian 


72 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


peoples that at some early period in their history their country 
was overpopulated and that, as it could not support so large 
a number of people, the active youth of the nation were 
obliged to find fresh homes and possessions in foreign lands. 
The father himself often drove out his younger sons in 
order to provide for his eldest son. This over population 
is attributed to polygamy. It is doubtful if polygamy 
necessarily leads to overpopulation, and it was certainly 
not the universal practice in ancient Scandinavia, but it does 
seem probable that at one time that country was much more 
thickly populated than at present, and polygamy among 
the ruling classes would mean the presence of a large number 
of younger sons for whom it was necessary to make provision. 
Other causes are not far to seek. The dwellers on the 
coast of the North Sea and the Baltic felt all that love of 
freedom and of enterprise which is the birthright of sea-girt 
nations, and when great kings or chieftains like Harold 
Fairhair in Norway endeavoured to consolidate the petty 
kingships under one sovereign their love of independence 
was outraged. Their nearest way of escape lay over the 
sea, and they straightway sought new homes in distant 
lands where they might lead a free and independent life. 
More important than this is the relation in which the rise 
of the Viking power stood to the decline of the great trading 
empire which immediately preceded it, viz. the Frisian. 
Unfortunately we know only too little of this great power 
whose domination of the trade of Western Europe lasted 
from the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century 
to the days when it fell before the power first of Charles 
Martel and then later of Charlemagne. According to 
Procopius, Frisians took part in the Saxon invasion of Britain. 
In Bede we hear of Frisian merchants in London, and there 
is mention in the Life of St. Liudger of the expulsion of 
Frisian merchants from York in the second half of the eighth 
century. Frisians and Scandinavians were already in conflict 
in the sixth century, for it was in a raid on Frisia that Hygelac, 
the sovereign and patron of Beowulf, fell somewhere about 
A.D. 512. When Alfred was at war with the Danes we 
find Frisian sailors in: his service, and it is clear that 
Frisians and Vikings alike were now far ahead of the 
English in the art of shipbuilding. The extent of their travels 


THE VIKING AGE 73 


westwards is illustrated by the name Fresicum mare given 
by Nennius to the Irish Sea. On the Continent there were 
important Frisian trading settlements at Mainz and Worms, 
and from North Frisia they made their way to the Eider, 
the old boundary of the Scandinavian North. From here 
they opened up trade with the Baltic and the North Sea. 
Their great trading centre was Dorestad, already mentioned 
in the seventh century, lying on an arm of the Rhine to the 
south of the Zuyder Zee. From here one trade route went 
south along the Lek, one of the outlets of the Rhine, towards 
England, while the Zuyder Zee itself gave an outlet to the North. 
When St. Anskar in A.D. 826 went on his first Christianizing 
mission to Sweden he went to Slesvik by Dorestad and thence 
made his way to Birka, later Bj6rk6, the oldest of the great 
trading towns of Sweden, on the shores of Lake Malar, a 
town which has now disappeared. The very name of this 
town is of intense interest, as it bears witness to the ancient 
importance of Frisian trade. The first element in this 
name is not, as one might think, Objork, < birch-tree,’ 
but the word birk, still used in Danish to denote a district 
with its own special rights, privileges, and laws. This word 
in its turn is not of Scandinavian origin but a loan-word from 
Frisian, in which Dirk is used in the same sense, and the old 
trading city of Birka must have been founded, not by Swedes, 
but by Frisians who, from the special trading privileges 
accorded to them, gave the place this name. This particular 
place-name has been tracked down by Professor Wadstein 
over the whole of North-Western Europe, and he has shown 
that further examples of it may be found at the head of the 
gulf of Bothnia, in Pirkkié on the Tornea, in the South of 
Finland, at Bj6rk6 near Viborg, in the North of Norway in the 
old district of Haalogaland, the home of Ohthere, at Bjarkoy. 
In all these cases the early forms show that we have to do, 
not with birch-trees, but with this old word birk, and 
Professor Wadstein believes that we may well have further 
examples in BjérkGen at the entrance to Trondhjem Fjord, 
Bjerkeréen near Bergen, Bjerk6é near Tunsberg, on Christiania 
Fjord, Bjérk6 off Géteborg, near the ancient market of 
Kongaelf, and Bjork6 off the coast of Sweden opposite to 
the island of Gothland. It is noteworthy that all these 
places lie on the great trading routes of North-Western Europe, 


74 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and they demonstrate clearly, when taken in conjunction 
with other evidence, that the Frisians had already opened 
up great trade-routes before the Vikings rose to power, 
and one can well understand that when the Frisian power 
was crushed under the heel of the Frankish empire the 
Vikings saw their chance. The overthrow of the Frisians 
and the Saxons brought the Danes and the Franks face to 
face along the Eider boundary, and henceforward there was 
no peace between them either on sea or land. 

The great success of the Viking movement certainly 
depended to a large extent on their own military and naval 
prowess, their personal character, their instinct for organiza- 
tion, but it also rested largely on the weakness, division, 
and degeneracy of their contemporaries in Christian Europe 
at the time. The Carolingian Empire was in the throes of 
dissolution and the coasts of Western Europe began to swarm 
with heathen Northmen eager for devastation and plunder. 
They first visited England and Ireland about the year 780, 
and by 800 they were in full conflict with the Franks, 
where the divided counsels of the successors of Charlemagne 
gave them a ready opening. It was the Danes and 
Norwegians, as we might expect from their geographical 
position, who chiefly visited our shores, the Danes ultimately 
making their chief settlements in North-Eastern and Midland 
England, the Norsemen in Ireland, the Western Islands, 
the Isle of Man, and North-Western England generally. The 
Swedes found their outlet chiefly on the shores of the Baltic, 
though we must remember that much of what we now call 
Sweden then belonged to Denmark or Norway—including the 
provinces of Bohuslan, Halland, Skaane and Blekinge. 

The story of these Scandinavian settlements in the British 
Isles and in Normandy is, or should be, familiar to us, but 
we must not forget that Scandinavian influences prevailed 
in other districts beside those of Western Europe. Already 
Finland and Lapland had largely been settled, and the 
Norse sagas tell of active trade with the shores of the White 
Sea and the ancient Bjarmaland, on the edge of the Ural 
Mountains, and behind the stories of the voyages of explora- 
tion of Ohthere and Wulfstan narrated to Alfred the Great 
there probably lies a long story of trade, first round the North 
Cape into the White Sea and second through the Baltic to 


THE VIKING AGE 75 


the coast of Esthonia. Then too we must remember that 
the Swedes ruled the whole of the Baltic provinces of Russia 
and indeed founded the Russian Empire itself in the ninth 
century. ‘Russ’ was a name given by the Finns to the 
Swedes, and in course of time this name of the alien rulers 
of the Slavs came to be applied to the whole people in much 
the same way as the name of the ‘ Frankish’ or ‘ French’ 
rulers of the Romance-speaking peoples of France came to 
be applied to the people themselves. The names of many 
Russian towns, such as Novgorod, are pure Scandinavian. 
Archeological finds of pure Northern origin are numerous. 

Yet further south did the Viking influence extend. 
Adventurers made their way overland as far south as 
Constantinople or Miklagard, ‘ great enclosure’ as they 
called it, and there won honour and wealth in the service 
of the Byzantine emperors. Many Variags, as they were 
called, being discontended with their service under the Grand 
Duke Vladimir of Russia, journeyed to Constantinople, 
there to enter the service of the Emperor. These Variags, 
and others who had preceded them, became the emperors’ 
well-known Varangian guard, and did them yeoman service. 
To be a Varangian was deemed a praiseworthy distinction, 
and men of the highest birth often enrolled themselves in 
the guard. Harold Sigurdsson, half-brother of St. Olaf, 
was for a long time captain of the Varangian guard, earned 
wealth and honour, and returned home to become king of 
Norway under the well-known name of Harold Hardrada, 
the Norse king who was defeated at the battle of Stamford 
Bridge. From Constantinople the Varangians were sent 
to all parts of the Byzantine Empire. Harold Hardrada 
himself visited the Greek Archipelago, Sicily, and North 
Africa. An interesting memorial of these journeys is still 
extant in the famous marble lion which the Venetians brought 
from Athens to Venice in 1687, and which now stands at the 
entrance to the Arsenal of that city. Formerly it stood on 
the shores of the Pirzeus, which from it bore the name of the 
*“Porto Leone.’ The lion itself is of Greek workmanship, 
but it has a Scandinavian runic inscription on it, unfortunately 
too much worn away for us to be able to decipher it with 
certainty. 

Enough has been said, perhaps, by way of introduction 


76 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


as to the extent and importance of Viking activities. Let 
us now consider that side of their equipment which was 
the immediate cause of their contact with the peoples of 
Western Europe, whether in trade or warfare, viz. their ships. 
The art of shipbuilding was carried to a high level of excellence 
and the number of vessels was great. During the course of 
the Viking attacks on England and France we hear more 
than once of fleets of 250 or even 350 vessels, and when 
Knut the Great conquered Norway he had a fleet of some 
1,200 vessels, which in modern reckoning is the equivalent 
of 1,440, as the Norwegians, like other Scandinavian peoples, 
used the long hundred in their reckoning, that is ten twelves 
instead of ten tens, a form of reckoning of which traces are 
still to be found in the parts of England most strongly 
affected by Scandinavian influence. 

In vessels of the pre-Viking age in the North we find no 
sails. Now they have regularly a single mast and sail. 
The sail is usually of course woollen material, often with blue, 
red and green stripes. The magnificent sails were a source 
of much pride to their possessors. Thus we are told of 
Sigurd ‘ Jerusalem-farer’ that on his way back from Jerusalem 
to Constantinople he lay for half a month off the coast of 
Greece and, though he had a favourable wind from the south 
to carry him through the Hellespont, he preferred to wait 
for a side wind so that his sails might be set lengthwise along 
the ship, for all his sails were trimmed with purple both fore 
and aft and could be admired by spectators on both sides 
of the straits. When the king entered Constantinople he 
sailed quite close to the shore so that from there one could 
see the whole expanse of the sails forming as it were one 
unbroken wall. 

The size of a ship was reckoned according to the number 
of rowing benches, two rowers being seated on every bench. 
Thus a ‘fifteen’ or ‘twenty-seater’ means a vessel having 
fifteen or twenty benches or pairs of oars. 

Olaf Tryggvason’s vessel, the Long Serpent, had thirty-four 
benches of oars, while Knut the Great had one of sixty-nine 
pairs of oars. The rudder was placed on the starboard side 
of the ship, hence called the steer or starboard side, while the 
gunwale was adorned with a row of shields painted alternately 
in different colours. The stem often ended in a dragon’s 








THE VIKING AGE 77 


head, done over with gold, whilst the stern was frequently 
shaped like a dragon’s tail, so that the vessel itself was often 
called a “‘dragon’”’. On going into action the ships were 
lashed together so that the fight resembled an engagement 
in the field. When at anchor, especially in harbour, tents 
and pavilions were erected on deck for the accommodation 
of the leaders. 

The difference between a war and a trading-ship is well 
illustrated by Snorri’s story of the escape of the Norwegian 
Harek of Thjotta through Copenhagen Sound after the battle 
of Helgeia in South Sweden. His king, St. Olaf, had returned 
to Norway overland, but Harek deemed himself too old for 
such a journey and determined to go back by sea. What 
happened may be told in the words of Morris in his translation 
of the passage :— “‘ Harek did as he had said; he abode a 
fair wind, and then sailed west about Skaney until he came 
east of the Knolls, and with a wind behind, blowing a 
breeze. Then he let strike sail and mast, and take down 
the vane, and wrap all the ship above the water in grey 
hangings, and let men row on a few benches fore and aft, 
but let most of the men sit low in the ship. Now King 
‘Knut’s watch saw the ship, and spoke among themselves 
as to what ship it could be, and guessed that there would 
be flitted salt or herring, whereas they saw few men, and 
little rowing, and moreover the ship seemed grey and 
untarred, like a ship bleached by the sun, and withal 
they saw that the ship was much low in the water. 
But when Harek came forth into the Sound, he let raise the 
mast and hoist sail, and let set up gilded vanes, and the sail 
was white as snowdrift and done with red and blue bends.” 
Naval camouflage is not an invention of the late war. 

Fortunately we are not confined to written sources for 
our knowledge of the Viking ships. In Norway more than 
one Viking ship has been found, the most famous being those 
of Gokstad and Oseberg, both from burial mounds on the 
shores of Christiania or, as we must learn to say, Oslo Fjord. 
They owe their preservation to the fact that they were used 
as burial chambers for the persons to whom they belonged. 
The oldest of these vessels is the Gokstad find. It is clinker- 
built with seats for sixteen pairs of rowers and is 78 ft. long 
and 16 ft. broad amidships. In form and workmanship 


78 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


it is not surpassed by modern vessels of a similar kind and, 
to judge from the remains found in it, it must date from 
about A.D. 900. 

The Oseberg ship is of a rather different type. The 
gunwale is lower and the whole vessel broader. The general 
impression it gives us is more of that type of vessel which 
Harek tried to turn his warship into, but the rich carving both 
of stem and stern, and also of the gunwale near the stern, 
suggest that it was probably not used for mere trade purposes. 
It was in the end used as the grave-chamber of a woman, 
and it is probable that it belonged to some wealthy king’s 
daughter, or perhaps to a queen. 

This account of the ships of the Vikings may serve to 
remind us that the relations between the Northmen and the 
rest of the world were by no means entirely of a warlike 
character. There was much peaceful intercourse, but its 
importance has as a rule been greatly underestimated by 
historians of the period. 

One must in the first instance speak of the settlement 
of Iceland. The story isa simple one. It commenced about 
A.D. 870 when many Norse nobles sought there, for them- 
selves and their followers, a freer life than they could obtain 
under the growing power of Harold Fairhair. It was greatly 
strengthened by settlers both from Norway and from Ireland 
and the Western islands when that power was firmly 
established by the Battle of Hafrsfjord, and by the year 
930 the settlement was virtually complete. Iceland was more 
purely Scandinavian than any other settlement made during 
the Viking Age. Here we have, not the case of one civilization 
grafted on another and earlier one, as in England, Ireland, 
or the Frankish Empire, but the transference of the best and 
finest elements in a nation to new and virgin soil where, 
for good or ill, they were free to develop their civilization 
on almost entirely independent lines. Settlers from the 
Western islands and from Ireland may have brought Celtic 
elements, and Christianity was not without its influence 
when it was introduced from Norway at the close of the tenth 
century, but on the whole we can see in Iceland just what 
Viking civilization was capable of when left to itself. 

At first the settlers lived in almost complete isolation, 
political and religious, from one another, but they soon 


THE VIKING AGE 79 


found that some form of organization was necessary, and 
groups of settlers began by choosing from among their number 
a go%t, or chieftain, half-priest, half leader, who was the speaker 
at their moot and their representative in negotiation with 
neighbouring groups. Then, continued disputes and the 
lack of a common law led to the establishment of a central 
moot or albing, with a speaker to speak one single law for 
all. But the Norsemen were much better at making consti- 
tutions and enacting laws than they were at observing them 
when instituted, and the condition of Iceland has been vividly 
if roughly summarized as one of ‘ all law and no government ’. 
The local things or the national althing might enact perfect 
laws, but there was no compelling force to make them obeyed. 

The failure of the Icelandic Commonwealth is amply compen- 
sated for by the rich intellectual development of Icelandic 
literature, which owed many of its characteristic features 
to the fact that it was written in a land almost completely 
detached from the main currents of Western medieval 
thought and the general trend of European history, but in 
itself that failure is full of deepest import for a right under- 
standing of the part played by Viking civilization in Europe. 
Powerful and highly developed as that civilization was in 
many ways, it only reached its highest and best expression 
when brought into fruitful contact with other and older 
civilizations. There it found the corrective for certain 
tendencies of too strongly individualistic character leading 
to political and intellectual anarchy, while at the same time 
by its own energy and vigour it quickened the life of the 
older civilizations where they were tending to become 
effete and outworn. 

But Iceland was not their only peaceful settlement. From 
Iceland, Erik the Red when outlawed made his way to 
Greenland, and soon, in spite of the strenuous climate and 
the unceasing hardships, extensive Norse settlements were 
established, and by the end of the tenth century extensive 
trade in walrus tusks, whaleblubber, hides, and fish of various 
kinds had been set up. 

There is a characteristic touch of Norse shrewdness and 
irony in the story that Erik the Red called the land Green-land 
for he said it would give people a desire to go there if it had 
a good name! 


80 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Norsemen had first been drawn to Greenland, so the 
story went, because a certain Gunnbjoérn, sailing west from 
Iceland, had caught sight of land. Now they were to venture 
yet further afield. Early navigation in the Mediterranean 
and elsewhere was almost entirely a question of hugging the 
coast. In the absence of any compass to steer by, it was 
but rarely that men ventured to sail straight across the open 
sea. It was one of the great triumphs of Norse sailors that 
they did not shrink from venturing boldly across the unknown, 
and there is no more striking example of it than the voyage 
which Leif, the son of Erik, made from Greenland in the 
spring of the year 1000, when he caught the first glimpse of 
a land which he called Vinland, or Wine-land, and gained the 
nickname of ‘ Leif the Lucky’. He had been driven far out 
of his course, and came upon a land with great forests, self- 
sown wheat, and vinestocks. A second expedition in which 
Leif’s father and his brother Thorstein took part was 
less lucky, for they were driven back by contrary winds so 
far east that they caught sight of Iceland and so far to the 
south that they saw the seabirds off the coast of Ireland. 
In the spring of 1003 a fresh expedition under Thorfinn 
Karlsefne, with three ships and 140 men, set sail from 
Greenland. Two days’ sail brought them to a land which 
they called Helleland, a land of great flat rocks and Arctic 
foxes, which has been identified with Labrador. A further 
day and a half’s sail brought them to a well-wooded land 
which they called Mark-land, that is ‘ forest-land’, which 
may well have been Newfoundland. Lured by the hope of 
finding Leif’s Vinland, with its wine-grapes, they continued 
to sail south, passed a ship-shaped headland, but were still 
faced by a cold and inhospitable coast. Soon, however, the 
coast was broken by a succession of creeks, a landing was 
made up one of these, two Scottish runners who were of the 
party were sent to explore, and brought back news and 
examples of the long-sought grapes and wheat. The winter 
was spent a little further south in a pleasant grass-grown land, 
and in the spring, travelling yet further south, they reached 
a good and pleasant land which resembled Leif’s own Vinland. 
Soon, however, the Norse settlers got on to bad terms with the 
natives, and so difficult did the situation become that in the 
summer of 1006 they sailed back home. Exactly how far 


THE VIKING AGE 81 


south the Norsemen sailed will never be satisfactorily settled, 
the indications in the saga are too vague. They must however, 
have gone a good way south to find a climate which would 
grow grapes, where there was no frost in winter, and the cattle 
could remain out all night. Some of these details must be 
definitely historical, for as early as the second half of the 
eleventh century Adam of Bremen tells of an island called 
Vinland, so named because it produced self-grown vinestocks 
and the best wine. Whatever may have been the exact 
position of Vinland, it is clear that the Norsemen discovered 
America five hundred years before Columbus. 

Voyages of Polar discovery were also started by them when, 
about the year 1050, Harold Hardrada sailed as far north 
in the Ice sea as he was able in the attempt to discover 
how far that sea stretched. Adam of Bremen, to whom 
we owe our knowledge of this expedition, tells us that Harold 
was driven back by storms, but from further details which 
he gives us Dr. Bugge has shown that there is good reason 
to believe that he also explored the White Sea in the hope of 
strengthening the trade in skins with the north of Russia. 

Sweden was not behindhand in the expansion of trade and 
in the establishment of new settlements. At that time a 
great part of her coast-line was in Danish or Norwegian hands, 
but she had extensive relations with the countries to the 
south and east, which were easiest of access, and we find at 
the same time frequent traces of friendly intercourse between 
Sweden and Western Europe, and, more especially, between 
Sweden and England. Many memorial stones still standing 
in Sweden bear witness to the journeys of Swedes to England, 
their business or their death there. The Scandinavian 
countries are very rich in Anglo-Saxon coins, and though at 
first we might be inclined to attribute their frequency to 
that unhappy system whereby Ethelred the Unready and 
other English kings paid Danegeld to buy off the Viking raids, 
an examination of the places where these coins have been 
chiefly found shows that such is not the case. Most of the 
Viking raiders undoubtedly came from Denmark, Norway and 
Western Sweden, whereas the coins have been found chiefly 
in the eastern districts of Sweden, round Lake Malar and in 
the neighbourhood of the great waterways connecting Sweden 
and the Baltic, but above all on the islands of Gothland and 


G 


82 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Oland. Some of these coins must have come by way of 
trade from Norway and Denmark, the Vikings when they 
returned home spending as recklessly as they had plundered, 
but the majority must be due to direct intercourse with 
England. It is worthy of notice in this connexion that the 
Swedish National Museum at Stockholm is richer in Anglo- 
Saxon coins than is our own British Museum. 

Eastwards their first settlement was on the shores of Lake 
Ladoga, at the place which they called Aldeigjuborg, 
established about 800. By the year 839 some of them had 
made their way overland to Constantinople, for there is a 
curious story from that year telling how an embassy from 
the Byzantine emperor visited the court of Louis the Pious, 
and how certain people among them, calling themselves 
Ros, i.e. Russian, asked to be allowed to return direct home 
instead of facing the perils of the journey back from 
Constantinople overland to their own home. Louis made 
inquiries as to their origin and found that they were really 
Swedes. The story of the intervention of Swedish nobles 
in the affairs of Russia, whereby they became its virtual 
rulers, is first recorded in the pages of the Russian monk 
Nestor, and its full significance has been explained by Vilhelm 
Thomsen in his masterly book on the founding of the Russian 
kingdom. By the year 882 they were as far south as Kieff, and 
soon they had their fleets on the Black Sea and the Sea of 
Marmora and were threatening Constantinople. From the 
political point of view it is easy to exaggerate the importance 
of this Swedish element in Russia, for the evidence is clear 
that these Swedish princes soon became completely 
Slavicized, lost all sense of their ultimate racial affinities, 
and became Slavonic princes pure and simple. But, however 
that may be, the story is remarkable for its giving yet further 
and striking proof of the expansive energy and initiative 
of the Scandinavian peoples, and, if it had few political 
results, it was all important in the development of trade and 
commerce. 

Of that commerce there are various witnesses. Among the 
most interesting are the frequent finds of Oriental and 
especially of Arabian coins. These coins first made their 
way to Scandinavia about the beginning of the ninth century 
and are far more common in Sweden than in the rest of 


THE VIKING AGE 83 


Scandinavia, some 380,000 having been found in Sweden 
alone. Some of these coins may have been brought home 
by Viking raiders, who we know to have visited the Moorish 
kingdom of Spain in the ninth and tenth centuries, but there 
can be no doubt that the vast majority reached Scandinavia 
overland through Russia, where extensive finds of Arabian 
coins mark the route along which trade at that time travelled 
from Asia to the North. The greater number of these coins 
were minted at Samarcand, east of the Caspian Sea, others 
at Baghdad on the Euphrates. Further evidence of the 
importance of this trade is to be found in the fact that at 
the end of the Viking period the Persian weight-system was 
introduced into the North and that the earliest Swedish 
coinage is based on it. Olaf Skotkonung’s coins, coined at 
Sigtuna, weigh half a Persian drachma. 

Trading was a matter of great difficulty and many risks in 
those days. The line of division between merchant and 
Viking was a slender one, and more than once we read how, 
when merchants went on a trading expedition, they arranged 
a truce until their business was concluded and then agreed 
to treat each other as enemies. The trading was generally 
carried on in large market-centres, and these centres avere 
generally to be found in places where numbers of people 
were accustomed to meet together for some religious or 
political purpose. Thus Uppsala, an ancient centre of 
worship in Sweden, had a large market, while one of the 
most famous of all Scandinavian markets was that held in 
Bohuslan on the Gétaely, at a spot where the boundaries of 
the three northern kingdoms met, and where periodical 
meetings were held for the settlement of business affecting 
the three countries. Other permanent centres were 
Skiringssalr on the S.W. coast of Norway, the lost Birka on 
Lake Malar, to which reference has already been made, 
Visby on the Island of Gothland, later one of the Hanse 
towns, and Haddeby-Slesvik on the Eider, Denmark’s chief 
channel of trade. The international character of much of 
this trade is well-illustrated by an incident which once occurred 
at the Gétaelv market. Onacertain occasion, a rich merchant 
named Gille (the name is Celtic), surnamed the Russian 
because of his numerous journeys to that country, set up his 
booth in the market and received a visit from the Icelander 


84 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Hoskuldr, who was anxious to buy a female slave. Gille 
drew back a curtain dividing off the inner part of the tent 
and showed Hoskuldr twelve female slaves. Héskuldr 
bought one and she proved to be an Irish king’s daughter, who 
had been made captive by Viking raiders. This story serves 
also to illustrate what was one of the chief articles of trade 
at the time, viz. slaves, generally prisoners of war. Other 
exports included furs, horses, wool, and fish, while the chief 
articles of import would naturally be luxuries of clothing or 
ornament. 

While the Scandinavian kings often had a coinage of their 
own in the lands which they conquered, in Scandinavia 
itself there was no coinage until the end of the Viking period, 
and foreign coins were used if prices were paid in coin at all. 
As a matter of fact, large payments were usually made in 
silver, whether in the forms of coins, ornaments, or ingots, 
and the required amount was weighed rather than counted 
out. The uncoined silver was often in the form of spirals, 
and we have preserved from the period several spirals which 
bear witness to the fact that trade was as full of tricks then 
as it is now. These spirals are made of copper with a thin 
coating only of silver. They must have been used in large 
payments where the spiral would not have to be cut and the 
fraud would not be detected. The weights used were 
generally of iron, with a thin coating of bronze. They were 
made thus so as to prevent trickery, for any attempt to 
diminish the weight by scraping its surface would at once 
reveal the iron beneath and the cheat would be exposed. 
Trading journeys were for the most part made by sea. Inland 
the lakes and rivers were used as far as was possible. There 
were no roads at that time, and such travelling as was done 
overland with goods had to be done with pack-horses. Carts 
were almost unknown. 

There can be little doubt of the importance of Viking 
traders and settlers generally in developing the trade of the 
lands in which they made settlements. In England one 
cannot but feel that they must have done much in developing 
the trade of the Eastern coast towns. Unfortunately we 
have practically no contemporary evidence on this point, 
but there must be long history behind the close relationship 
between such English ports as Grimsby, Hull and King’s 


THE VIKING AGE 85 


Lynn, and Scandinavia, which we find prevailing in post- 
conquest days, and which Dr. Alexander Bugge has done so 
much to illuminate. In Ireland we are very much luckier. 
Both from the Irish annals and from the Icelandic sagas 
we can glean a good deal about the influence of the Vikings 
on Irish trade. It was the Vikings who developed the great 
seaport towns, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and 
Limerick. The system whereby foreign merchants had to 
barter their goods at the various country fairs was largely 
done away with in favour of fixed markets at the important 
centres. The wealth of the trading centres is illustrated in 
more than one passage in the Irish chronicles and the Norse 
sagas. The spoils carried off by the Irish after a victory near 
Dublin in the year 1000 included “ gold, silver, bronze, and 
precious stones, carbuncle gems, buffalo horns, and beautiful 
goblets, much also of various vestures of all colours’’, and 
similarly, a few years before, the Irish carried off from the 
Vikings in Limerick “their jewels and their best property, 
their saddles, beautiful and foreign, their gold and silver ; 
their beautifully woven cloth of all colours and all kinds, 
their satins and their silken cloths, pleasing and variegated, 
both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth in like manner’’. 
In Erbyggjasaga we hear of a merchant ship that came from 
Dublin to Sneefellsness in Iceland in the year 1000. One of 
the passengers, a woman named Thorgunna, had a large 
chest containing beautifully embroidered bed-clothes, English 
sheets, a silken quilt, and other costly wares, the like of which 
were rare in Iceland. 

These stories of the rich and varied possessions of the 
Vikings in Ireland may serve to introduce us to the last 
phase of our study of the Viking age, viz. the rich material 
civilization of the period and the high artistic worth of many 
of its products. The actual life and the houses of these 
Northmen may have been simple and even primitive, but 
even in their houses there was much rich carving of wood 
with incidents from the mythological and heroic sagas and 
the houses of great men were often hung with tapestry, and 
even the household vessels at times were things of great 
artistic beauty. It is, however, when we come to their dress 
and ornaments that we see this wealth in all its beauty and 
fullness. There can be little doubt that our Viking forefathers 


86 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


had attained a high standard of personal luxury and 
adornment. If we visit the museums of Copenhagen, 
Stockholm and Oslo-Christiania, we cannot but be impressed 
by the wealth of ornaments displayed before us, magnificent 
brooches of silver and bronze, massive silver neck rings and 
girdles, arm-rings and finger-rings, large beads of silver 
glass, rock-crystal, cornelian, amber and other materials. 
The objects are not only evidence of the material wealth of the 
Vikings, but also of their high artistic skill. At one time it 
was usually thought that all antiquities showing artistic skill 
must have been brought from abroad as plunder, but patient 
research has shown clearly that the majority of the articles 
showing the best technical skill must have been wrought 
in Scandinavia itself, and there is a surprising scantiness 
of such objects which can be shown definitely to be of foreign 
manufacture. 

The most characteristic of all these ornaments was 
undoubtedly the brooch. It is usually of bronze, oval in 
shape, with silver bosses. When found now the bronze is 
usually green with verdigris, but it must originally have had 
the brilliance of gold, and with their silver bosses and silver 
wire round the edges the brooches must have been of splendid 
appearance. The decorative art used in these various 
articles is interesting. It is in that style once known as 
‘dragon’ style, but now commonly termed ‘animal 
ornamentation’. There are no figures of dragons—fantastic 
creatures with wings or such-like—neither have we the full forms 
of any animal actually existing, but the ornamentation is 
built up from animal elements by an entirely unrestrained 
imagination. Thus we clearly have heads, limbs, and tails 
of animals interwoven with one another in fantastic designs, 
but it would be idle to try to find what particular animal 
the artist has in mind. This highly characteristic form of 
ornamentation is in fact based on that of a preceding period 
in the culture of the North Teutonic peoples, but at the same 
time it owes a great deal to foreign and, more especially, » 
_ to Irish influence. Irish culture, art, and science played an 
important part in the civilization of Europe in the early 
Middle Ages, and one side of that culture, and indeed one 
of its most striking sides, was its decorative art. We 
have definite evidence that already early in the eighth 


THE VIKING AGE 87 


century this influence was working with full force in 
Scandinavia. 

The story of Viking ornament and Viking decorative 
design may in conclusion serve to remind us yet again of two 
marks characteristic of the Viking age which we must always 
bear in mind if we wish to understand it aright. The first is 
that it is an age of curious contrasts of barbarism and culture, 
direst cruelty and bloodthirstiness such as we find in the 
story of Ragnar Lothbrok, combined with a strong legal sense 
such as that which laid the foundations of what was ultimately 
to become the twelfth century ‘jury by presentment’. The 
second is that the Vikings were a race capable of developing 
all that is best in civilization other than their own, whether 
it be Irish ornamentation, Romanesque architecture, or 
Frisian trade-routes. 


CHAPTER V 


ARAB TRAVELLERS AND MERCHANTS, A.D. 1000-1500 
By Sir T. W. ARNOLD, C.LE., Litt.D. 


ree the great days of Imperial Rome, the Western world 

had not seen so vast an empire as that of the Arabs 
in the eighth century of the Christian era. Weare accustomed 
to think of this great Muhammadan empire as belonging to 
the Orient; but if we remember that it stretched from the 
Atlantic Ocean, from the shores of Morocco and Portugal, 
all along the coast of North Africa and Egypt—that it 
included Palestine and Syria, and that even when we trace 
it on further east into Mesopotamia, we are still within 
territory that once formed part of a Roman province—it 
becomes clear that this new empire was a Mediterranean 
power. Closer examination reveals to us that this was not 
merely the case from a geographical point of view, but further 
that the Arabs were the heirs of that Hellenistic culture, for 
which a way was first opened by the conquests of Alexander 
and which became so widely diffused throughout the eastern 
provinces of the later Roman Empire. These Hellenistic 
influences, moreover, were not confined to the countries 
which once owed allegiance to Rome, but spread far eastward 
into lands that the Roman armies never succeeded in reaching, 
for the Oriental Christian Churches had cherished the 
inheritance of Greek thought—philosophy, medicine, 
mathematics, physical science—and had_ diffused its 
stimulating influences through the channels of those Oriental 
languages into which the works of Greek authors were 
translated, and thus it spread among the Arabic-speaking 
peoples. 

Western Europe is apt to view the Muhammadan world as 
something entirely remote from itself ; such a judgment leaves 
out of consideration the fact that both the Christian West 
and the Muhammadan East are in many respects heirs of the 
same vivifying cultural influences, and that Islam in the 
ultimate analysis of its civilization reveals itself as the 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 89 


aftermath of Hellenism in the East. In our estimate of the 
culture of the Muhammadan world we are apt to forget 
that the population of the Arab Empire included the races 
from which sprang St. John of Damascus and many another 
great theologian of the Christian Church, and that the 
revelation of Greek literature, to which in Europe the 
intellectual movement of the Renaissance was largely due, 
wrought a similar and even more profound influence on the 
intellectual outlook of the Muslim world. The first translators 
from the Greek into Arabic were members of the Jacobite 
and Nestorian Churches, and their translation of Ptolemy 
laid the foundation of that geographical science which 
the Muhammadans were to carry so far. The very word for 
** geography ’’ in Arabic—a mere transcription of the Greek 
into Arabic letters—indicates its origin, and it is to this 
origin that Muhammadan geographical science owes much 
of its sanity, its careful observation of actual facts, its 
unceasing prosecution of the cognate studies of mathematics 
and astronomy. We accordingly find a serious pursuit of 
geographical science among the Arabs from the ninth century 
onward ; it was often cultivated for its own sake, and the 
geographical literature in the Arabic language is a very 
creditable outcome of the Greek sources from which it grew. 
‘A further stimulus to geographical research was given by the 
very immensity of the Arab empire, so long as it was still 
undivided. There was a period during which the traveller 
could pass from the confines of China to the pillars of Hercules, 
from the banks of the Indus to the Cilician Gates, from the 
Oxus to the shores of the Atlantic, without stepping outside 
the boundaries of the territory ruled over by the Caliph in 
Damascus or Baghdad. Even after this vast empire broke 
up into separate principalities, the journey of the Muslim 
traveller was facilitated by that brotherhood of Islam which 
gives to the Muhammadan world its cosmopolitan character, 
and enables community of faith to wipe out all differences of 
race and origin. However many hundreds of miles the Muslim 
might journey from his native town, he could confidently hope 
for a welcome and generous hospitality at the hands of his 
co-religionists, especially if he had any reputation for piety 
or religious knowledge, and he might even chance to come 
across a fellow townsman, even though his wanderings had 


90 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


carried him into the land of the infidels, far beyond the 
boundaries of the Muslim empire; thus Ibn Battitah, an 
energetic traveller of the fourteenth century, to whom reference 
will be made later, tell us how on his arrival in a town in 
China, which he calls Kanjanfu, the Muhammadan merchants 
there came out to receive him with flags and a band of 
musicians with trumpets, drums and horns, bringing horses 
for him and his party, so that they rode into the city in a 
triumphal procession. During his stay there he heard of the 
arrival of a highly respected doctor of the law among the 
Muhammadans of that part. His friends asked leave to 
introduce this person to him, and he was announced as 
Mawlana Qiwam ud-Din of Ceuta. As Ceuta was near his 
own birthplace, Tangier, Ibn Battiittah was naturally struck 
by the name and scanned his face eagerly. After they had 
been talking awhile, the visitor said, ‘‘ You seem to be looking 
at me as though youknewme.”’ ‘‘ From what country do you 
come ?’’ asked Ibn Battiitah. ‘‘ From Ceuta.’? ‘And lam 
from Tangier,’’ replied the traveller, and they wept together 
at the thought of this strange meeting at the other end of 
the world, so far from their distant home in the West. After 
some further conversation Ibn Battitah realized that they 
had met before in India, in the capital, Delhi, which 
Qiwam ud-Din had visited as a young man with his uncle, 
a Spanish Muhammadan. The Sultan of Delhi had tried 
to induce the young man to settle in India, but he refused 
to stay as he had set his heart on visiting China ; and there 
he soon acquired a high position and considerable wealth. 
Some years later, after his return home, Ibn Battitah started 
off to explore Central Africa and met a brother of this same 
man in a town in the Western Sudan.! Ibn Battiitah quite 
naturally remarks on the enormous distance that separated 
these two brothers from one another. This incident is 
characteristic of Muhammadan society during the Middle 
Ages ; it reveals the enterprise that merchants and travellers 
showed in journeying such enormous distances, and the 
facilities which their co-religionists provided for those who 
braved the perils of such arduous journeys. 


1 Ibn Battitah, ed. Defrémery and Sanguinetti (Paris, 1858), iv, 
pp. 281-2. 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 91 


Under such circumstances it is not surprising to find 
that there is a very considerable mass of geographical literature 
in the Arabic languages. The earliest examples of it derive 
their origin from the administrative necessities connected 
with the vast empire over which the Caliphs held sway. In 
order that there might be rapid communication between the 
capital and the outlying provinces, an elaborate system of 
posts was kept up ; at intervals of every few miles there was a 
postal station where the official messenger could get a fresh 
relay of horses, or pass on his despatch to another member 
of the same service ; and for the benefit of such messengers, 
and for the passage of troops, a network of roads was kept 
in good order so as to render possible rapid transit from one 
administrative centre or one strategic point to another. 
This postal system was one of the many administrative 
arrangements that the new Arab Government took over 
from the Roman Empire whose provinces on the southern 
and eastern shores of the Mediterranean it had annexed. 
The very Arabic word for this postal system bartd derived 
from the late Latin word for a post-horse, veredus, is an 
abiding acknowledgment of this indebtedness. At present 
we are concerned with it only in its connexion with the growth 
of geographical literature in the Arabic language, for we possess 
some of the handbooks in which a list of the postal stations 
was set down with the distances between each, a description 
of the principal routes and of the taxes levied 1 in the various 
provinces they traversed. 

Besides this feature of the administrative organization 
of the Arab Empire, there was another circumstance—in 
this instance connected with the religion of the conquerors— 
that served to stimulate interest in geography and to induce 
many persons to undertake lengthy journeys. This was the 
pilgrimage. Among the duties incumbent upon every Muslim, 
provided only that he had health and sufficient money for 
the expenses of the journey, was that of making the pilgrimage 
to Mecca once at least in his lifetime. Consequently 
throughout the whole of the Muhammadan era, except on the 
few occasions when political disturbance has prevented, 
there has been a stream of pilgrims setting their faces towards 
the Holy City in which their religion first had its origin, 
from every part of the Muhammadan world—Egypt, Syria, 


92 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Mesopotamia, and Persia, the inhabitants of which enjoyed 
a certain proximity to Arabia—but also from more distant 
countries such as Turkistan, India, China, and the Malay 
Archipelago in the east, and Spain, Morocco and the Sudan in 
the west, the inhabitants of which had, in early times, to face 
great risks and undergo much toil and trouble in order to 
attain the fulfilment of their pious aim. Religion thus came 
in to stir up any latent desire there might be for travel, 
and that to a still greater extent than was the case in medieval 
Christendom, because the Muhammadan pilgrimage to Mecca 
was not regarded, as was the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 
Christendom, as an exceptional experience in the life of the 
devout believer, for it was one of the five pillars of the 
practical observance of the faith of Islam, and though 
theologians recognized circumstances that absolved the 
faithful from the fulfilment of this pious duty, so that it was 
not an act of universal obligation, still in practice these 
indulgences have been disregarded by thousands of devout 
persons who have undertaken the journey BONS all obstacles 
of age, poverty and ill-health. 

There is still a third circumstance that stimulated travelling 
in the Muhammadan world—one common to almost every 
community in the world—and that is commerce. In 
Muhammadan society the merchant enjoys a respect and 
consideration that is closely connected with the origin of his 
faith ; for Muhammad, the Prophet, the founder of Islam, 
had been himself a merchant, and thus conferred upon the 
profession of the trader an elevation and a dignity which has 
gained for him an entrance into the highest society. Several 
sayings traditionally ascribed to the Prophet assigned an 
honourable position to the merchant in the Muslim hierarchy, 
e.g. “In the Day of Judgment the honest truthful Muslim 
merchant will take rank with the martyrs of the faith’’,? 
and in another tradition the Prophet says that the truthful 
merchant will sit under the shadow of the throne of God on the 
Day of Judgment.?, The Prophet commends the merchants to 
his successors, for “ they are the couriers of the world and the 
trusty servants of God upon earth”. Consequently, trade has 

1 Kanz al-‘Ummal (Haydarabad, A.H. 1312-15), 1, No. 4084. 


2 Ibid., No. 4086. 
$ Ibid., No. 4112. 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 93 


never implied any disparagement in Muhammadan eyes, for 
are not the market-places the table of God and whosoever 
comes to them partakes thereof? The greatest of the early 
Caliphs, ‘Umar, said, ‘‘ There is no place where I would be 
more gladly overtaken by death than in the market-place, 
buying and selling for my family.’’! This same great ruler 
is reported to have set honesty in the commercial life above 
the punctual fulfilment of religious duties, as a test of the 
worth and excellence of a man. There was a case brought 
before him in which it was of importance to decide whether 
confidence could be placed in the testimony of a certain 
witness, and before ‘Umar would allow the man to bear 
testimony, he said ‘‘ Bring me a man who knows you’’. So 
the witness brought forward a friend, who vouched for the 
excellence of his character. But ‘Umar asked, ‘‘Are you 
his near neighbour? Do you know his goings out and 
comingsin?’’ ‘‘No,” he replied. Then ‘Umar asked again, 
‘* Have you been his companion on a journey so as to have 
had opportunities of recognizing his true character ?”’ Again 
the answer was “‘No’’. Then ‘Umar asked, ‘‘ Have you done ° 
business with him, for it is when money passes from hand to 
hand that the true piety of a man is learned?’’ Again the 
answer was ‘‘No’’. ‘‘Then I presume you have seen him 
standing in the mosque, repeating the Qur’4an and bowing 
down in prayer.’’ This time theanswer was ‘‘ Yes’’; whereupon 
‘Umar drove the man away, saying, ‘‘ You know him not,”’ 
and turning to the witness said, ‘‘ Bring me a man who really 
knows you, for trading is the true test of a man, and it is in 
the operations of trade that his piety and religious worth 
become known.” 2 It is in the same spirit that one of the 
greatest thinkers of the Muhammadan world, Ghazali, who 
flourished towards the end of the eleventh century, draws 
a picture of the ideal merchant : he must begin his business 
with a pure intention, be content with gains that can be got 
by lawful methods, and spend these gains on his family and 
pious purposes ; justice and benevolence are to be the guiding 
principles of his commercial activity, and in the market he 
must promote righteousness and check iniquity. He must 
not come into the market full of greed, and should leave it 


1 Al-Ghazali, Ihya al-‘Ulam (Cairo, A.H. 1289), ll, p. 53, 20. 
8 LG. as Da 


94 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


when he has gained sufficient profit for his wants. He must 
not neglect the market of the next world, i.e. the mosque, for 
the market of this life, and in all his actions he must observe 
the prescriptions of the religious law, remembering that he 
has to give account of his doings in the Day of Judgment. 
Into all the details of this picture it is impossible to enter here, 
but it is of significance as having been drawn by one of the 
greatest theologians that the Muslim world has produced 
and as implying the expectation that the trader would serve 
as an exemplar of the devout life, and would be a model of 
righteousness for others to follow. 

So much for the ideal presentation of the Muhammadan 
merchant. As for the actual business with which he was 
concerned, a manual for traders,? composed possibly about 
the same period as that of Ghazali—though the exact date 
is uncertain—gives us a list of the various articles in which 
the medieval trader was interested. First come precious 
stones—pearls, diamonds, turquoise, cornelian, onyx, coral, 
etc. —then scents, such as musk, amber, camphor, sandalwood, 
and cloves. The best amber comes from south-east Arabia, 
the next best from Spain or Morocco; the best aloes come from 
India. These geographical references show how wide the 
medieval merchant threw his net. Of spices there is naturally 
a long list : pepper and cinnamon and ginger and many others. 
Paper was an important object of commerce ; the best kind 
is described as heavy, well polished, pleasant to the touch, 
and free from worm holes, which can be prevented by means 
of a species of Indian mint. Many kinds of silk and woollen 
stuffs, furs and carpets are mentioned, and then follows a 
large group of metals ; iron, copper, lead, tin, etc., and another 
group of various articles of food. Of any one of these various 
articles it would be possible to speak in detail, but for 
our consideration here I will select only furs and skins. 

Unexpected evidence as tothe extent of the fur trade between 
Muhammadan countries and the north of Europe before the 
beginning of the eleventh century, had been obtained from 
the enormous finds of Muhammadan coins in various parts 
of northern Europe, especially on the shores of the Baltic. 
These coins were obtained from Muhammadan traders in 


1 Tbid., ii, pp. 73-5. 
2 Kitab al-ishavati ila mahasint ’t-tijava (Cairo, A.H. 1318). 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 = 95 


exchange for skins and furs, and some estimate may be formed 
of the development which this trade attained from the fact 
that upwards of ten millions of suchcoins have been discovered, 
and even these do not represent the total number once in 
circulation, because there is direct evidence that in some 
instances thediscoverers of a hoard of precious coins have melted 
them down, and such destruction has doubtless happened 
in cases that have escaped record. As many as ten or twelve 
thousand of such coins have been found in a single locality, 
and in Sweden alone there is a record of such finds in as many 
as 169 different places.1 How far north the Muhammadans 
went in search of furs it is difficult to determine, but the 
observation made by an Arab geographer that, at one of the 
emporia in which the Muhammadan traders purchased these 
wares, the night was shorter than an hour shows that some 
of them at least must have journeyed a very considerable 
distance to the north of their native country.? 

Such trade was of course carried on by land, but equally 
adventurous was the sea traffic, and there are some manuals 
for mariners that have come down to us, dealing especially 
with the Red Sea, and the journey thence to the Persian 
Gulf, to India, and to China. The author of one of these 
handbooks for pilots tells us that his father and grandfather 
had both been pilots on the Red Sea, and that after he had 
himself gained experience for forty years he embodied in 
his book what he had learnt from them, as well as the fruit 
of his own experience.? It was such bold seamen as these 
who brought back the stories which we find in the later 
compilations upon geography, and their adventures served as 
the basis for the well known story of Sindbad the Sazlor. 
Much that they reported we know now to be true, such as the 
waterspouts that endangered the safety of their frail vessels, 
the flying fish, and other marvels, that seemed incredible 
to some of their contemporaries ; but many of their stories 
were obviously exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or sheer 
inventions of a lively fancy. The compiler had no means of 
testing the accuracy of such reports: even what we now 


2 Cf. Chapter IV. 

2 Georg Jacob, Der nordisch-baltische Handel dev Avaberim Mittelalter 
(Leipzig, 1887), pp. 26, 40, 122. 

3 Ibn Majid, Instructions nautiques et voutiers arabes des XV et 
XV Ié¢ siécles, ed. G. Ferrand (Paris, 1921). 


96 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


know to have been entirely false probably did not appear 
to him more marvellous than some of the narrations that were 
really based on accurate observation ; and though he sets it 
all down, he cannot from time to time refrain from an expression 
of mild scepticism in the phrase, ‘‘But God knows best.’ } 
Still, apart from the audacious mendacity and the romantic 
picturesqueness of some of these stories, we cannot but admire 
the splendid courage and intrepidity of these Muhammadan 
seamen who set out on such perilous enterprises. 

These sea captains in the Middle Ages not only possessed 
a very considerable knowledge of the art of navigation, but 
they had a high ideal of the responsibilities attached to their 
profession. One of the earliest of such collections of mariners’ 
tales that has come down to us from the tenth century gives 
us some little insight into the character of these sea captains, 
in the record of a conversation that one of them had with a 
terrified passenger, who for three nights and days had suffered 
agonies during a violent tempest. ‘*‘ You must know,”’ he 
said, ‘‘that travellers and merchants have to put up with 
terrible dangers, compared with which these experiences are 
pleasant and agreeable; but we who are members of the 
company of pilots are under oath and covenant not to let a 
vessel perish so long as there is anything left of it and the 
decree of fate has not fallen upon it; we who belong to the 
company of ships’ pilots never go on board a vessel without 
linking our own life and fate to it; so long as it is safe, we 
live ; but if it perishes, we die with it ; so have patience and 
commend yourself to the Lord of the wind and of the sea, 
who disposes of men’s lives as He will.” 2 

Let us now turn to the scientific writers on geography, 
who pursued their investigations on rigid lines of scientific 
inquiry, in several instances undertaking extensive journeys 
and collecting materials on the spot. The number of such 
Arab geographers is so extensive that it is only possible here to 
refer to a few of them. One of the most remarkable of them, 
of whose personality we know something from the account 
that he himself has given of the labours he underwent in 
compiling his book, is al-Mugaddasi. Born in Jerusalem 
about the middle of the tenth century, he spent twenty 


1 Cf. Chapter VIII, p. 160. 
* Buzurj b. Shahriyar, ‘Aja@’ib al-Hind, ed. P. A. Van der Lith. 
(Leiden, 1883), p. 22. 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 97 


years in travelling throughout the various Muslim dominions 
of his time, for, unlike other geographers of a later date, he 
made no attempt to describe the countries of the unbelievers. 
He speaks slightingly of the work of some of his predecessors 
as being based upon mere hearsay ; he himself took infinite 
pains to obtain in each locality accurate information as to the. 
climate, the products, the state of trade, the coinage, weights 
and measures, and the general characteristics of the inhabit- 
ants. He mixed with persons of every class, and tells 
us how he had audience with princes and mixed familiarly 
with the great, while at other times he had to gain a scanty 
livelihood by hawking in the bazaar, or make his living by 
bookbinding. Sometimes he could afford to ride or be carried 
in a palanquin, at other time he had to tramp on foot in the 
blazing sun or in the snow. His caravan was plundered 
again and again by highway robbers, and once he nearly lost 
his life by drowning. He was thrown into prison as a spy, 
was falsely accused of heresy, suffered shame and humiliation 
of all kinds, and had many unpleasant encounters with 
highwaymen and cut-purses. He never actually had to beg 
his bread, but he must often have come near to being reduced 
to such an extremity. He supped with Sufis, and shared 
the scanty meal of ascetics. He led the public worship 
in the mosque, preached from the pulpit, and gave the call 
to prayer from the minaret. He watched the Byzantine 
galleys engaged in asea fight, and attached himself to military 
expeditions to other frontiers. During these _ travels 
al-Mugaddisi tells us that he received as many as thirty 
different designations, such as pilgrim, ascetic, reciter of the 
Qur’an, teacher, lawyer, merchant, bookbinder, paper-maker, 
doctor, messenger, and the like.1_ The book he produced, 
ranks as one of the most accurate descriptions of the 
territories of Islam during the Middle Ages, and in spite of the 
long account that al-Muqaddisi gives of himself and of his 
efforts to secure accuracy, he modestly disclaims any 
assumption of completeness, and frankly says that he does not 
consider his book to be above criticism or free from possible 
error. But whatever defects there may be in his work, 
they are certainly not due to any failure on the part of the 


1 Ahsan al-taqasim, ed. De Goeje, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1906), pp. 43-5. 
H 


98 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


author to make every effort within his power to obtain the 
fullest and most trustworthy information. 

About two centuries later, another great geographer, 
Yaqit, who died in the first half of the thirteenth century, 
was likewise an energetic traveller. His parents were 
Greeks, but while he was still a little boy he was carried off 
as a Slave and sold to a merchant in Baghdad. His master 
gave him a careful education and sent him on long journeys 
connected with his business. In this way Yaqit acquired 
an extensive knowledge of various parts of the Muhammadan 
world, and he continued his journeys even after the death of his 
patron. His chief work is a great Geographical Dictionary, 
largely compiled from the writings of earlier geographers, but 
enriched by materials he had himself collected during his 
travels. Mugaddisi and Yaqit may be taken as good 
examples of the Arab geographers who approached the subject 
of their study from a scientific point of view, and composed 
works aiming at a certain degree of completeness. 

To a different category belong the travellers whose 
purpose was to leave behind an account of their own 
personal experiences. Of these we may select for consider- 
ation two only: Ibn Jubayr in the twelfth century and 
Ibn Battitah in the fourteenth. Ibn Jubayr was a 
Spaniard who, after a successful career as a_ student, 
was appointed secretary to the then Prince of Granada. 
One day his master gave him a cup of wine, bidding 
him drink it. “I never drink wine,” replied Ibn Jubayr. 
‘““By Allah, you are going to drink it now and seven 
times over,’ and the unfortunate secretary dared protest 
no longer, but after he had drunk the seven cups the Prince 
gave them to him again, this time full of gold. When Ibn 
Jubayr returned to his home he made a vow that he would 
spend the money upon making the pilgrimage to Mecca in 
order to atone for his involuntary breach of the religious law. 
Of this journey, which lasted for two years, from 1183 to 1185, 
he wrote a full account, of great interest from many points of 
view ; all the observances of the pilgrimage to Mecca at that 
period are minutely described, the measurements of the 
sacred buildings are given in detail, and they serve as valuable 
material for comparison with present conditions. 

Saladin was at that time engaged in his struggle with the 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a4.p. 1000-1500 = 99 


Crusaders, and Ibn Jubayr frequently mentions his great 
contemporary with enthusiastic admiration. When he 
describes the pilgrims in prayer around the Ka‘bah, he makes 
reference to the profound emotion that stirred the vast 
congregation when prayers were offered for this great 
champion of the faith: ‘*‘ At the name of Saladin all tongues 
quivered as they cried ‘Amen’, for when God loveth one of 
His servants, He inspires the love of him in the hearts of 
men.’ Such an enthusiasm did he feel for his hero that when 
the news arrived of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, 
it stirred Ibn Jubayr to undertake this long journey to the 
East once more, though at the time, when there was so much 
hostility between Christians and Muslims, a journey from 
one end of the Mediterranean to another was not without 
peril of its own. One of the most interesting parts of Ibn 
Jubayr’s travels is the account he gives of the condition 
of the Muhammadan population under Christian rule in 
Sicily. William II was reigning at Palermo when he reached 
that island, and Sicily had been for about a century under the 
rule of the Norman kings. Though the Muslims seemed 
to have lived in some apprehension, and to have practised 
the religious observances of their faith to some extent in 
secret, the king appears to have treated them with much 
consideration and to have employed many Muhammadans 
about his person, and given them positions of responsibility 
as ministers and chamberlains. His chief cook, too, was a 
Muhammadan, and he had also a Muhammadan bodyguard. 
There were so many Muhammadan maidservants in the 
palace that Ibn Jubayr was assured by one of the officials 
that they had succeeded in converting to Islam the Christian 
women there. William II himself could both read and write 
Arabic, and the superscription on royal documents was 
written in the same language. 

The other traveller, Ibn Battiitah, to whom attention may 
be drawn, was a man of quite a different type. Ibn Jubayr 
had been a true scholar, exact, even meticulous, a close 
observer, with a sound judgment of men and manners ; 
his elegant and attractive style, together with the justness 
of his descriptions, caused late writers to incorporate whole 


1 Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. W. Wright and M. J. De Goeje (London, 
1907), PP. 97, 325. 


100 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


passages of his narrative into their own works often without 
acknowledgment. On the other hand, Ibn Battiitah did 
not himself write the work that passes under his name, 
for it was taken down from dictation and embellished by 
one of the secretaries of his master, the Sultan of Fez. He 
is certainly at times guilty of inaccuracies, and his account 
of China, in particular, is so confused that some of his critics 
have doubted whether he ever went there at all; others, 
on the contrary, in spite of these faults, have strongly upheld 
his general veracity. His narrative is lively and often 
entertaining, and reveals him as a man of restless energy 
and curiosity, clearsightedness, and a determination to enjoy 
life; at the same time he was a devout observer of the 
practices of his religion, with a particular devotion for the 
saints. His travels extended over a period of twenty-eight 
years ; starting from his home in Tangier, he made his way 
across the north of Africa to Egypt, then spent several years 
in visiting various Muhammadan  countries—Palestine, 
Syria, Arabia, Persia; after living for three years in Mecca 
he went to Aden and travelled down the east coast of Africa 
to Quiloa ; having got so far south, he made his way north 
till he reached the Crimea, and went as far up the Volga 
as he could in the hope of seeing what he called ‘‘ the land of 
darkness”’. After a visit to Constantinople, where he received 
as kindly a welcome from the Christian Emperor as he 
was accustomed to receive from Muhammadan princes, he 
returned to the Crimea, and turning east made his way 
through Khwarizm, Bukhara, Turkistan, and Afghanistan 
into India, where he remained for about eight years in the 
service of the Sultan of Delhi. In a.p. 1342 he attached him- 
self to an embassy that was being sent to the Emperor of 
China ; but the vessel carrying the envoy and the presents 
was wrecked off the coast of Malabar, and Ibn Battiitah, after 
some unpleasant adventures, went to the Maldive Islands, 
where he held the post of a judge for a year and a half. 
Thence, after a visit to Ceylon, he went by way of Bengal 
and the Malay Archipelago to China. From China he 
returned to his native country in 1349, after an absence of 
twenty-four years. Still he was not satisfied, but soon 
started off again on a visit to Spain, and later into Central 
Africa, where he visited Timbuktu and sailed up the Niger, 


ARAB TRAVELLERS 4.p. 1000-1500 101 


returning through the Sahara to Fez. According to one 
computation, his wanderings had extended over a length of 
75,000 miles. 

This chapter may conclude with two extracts from Ibn 
Battiitah’s travels as typical of the risks this adventurous 
traveller had to run. The first is his account of the 
departure from Calicut of the embassy intended for China. 
The Zamorin of Calicut had fitted out for the use of this 
embassy one of a fleet of thirteen Chinese junks that were 
then in the harbour. Ibn Battiitah said to the captain, 
a day before the vessel was to sail, ‘*‘ I want a cabin to myself, 
because of the slave girls that are travelling with me.” The 
captain replied, ‘“* The Chinese merchants have taken return 
tickets and have occupied all the cabins, but my son-in-law 
has one which I can let you have; it has no bathroom, 
but you may be able to exchange it for another during 
the voyage.’ Accordingly Ibn Battiitah had his luggage 
taken on board and made his slaves embark. This was on 
a Thursday ; he himself remained on land so as to take part 
in the Friday prayer. Early on the Friday morning one 
of his servants came to tell him that the cabin they had got 
was very uncomfortable and small. So he spoke to the 
captain about it, who said, ‘I can’t help it, but if you care 
to go on board one of the smaller vessels you will find plenty 
of cabins to choose from.” So the change was made, and 
all his goods and slaves were transferred to the other ship 
before the Friday prayer began. But in the afternoon 
the sea became very rough; all the other vessels had started 
except three—the junk carrying the presents for the Emperor 
of China, another whose owners intended to spend the winter 
on the Malabar coast, and Ibn Battiitah’s little vessel. 
‘**T had to sleep on shore that night with nothing but a rug 
to lie on, as I could not get on board the vessel, nor could 
those in it come to me.” By Saturday morning the three 
vessels had been carried far out to sea; one of them was 
dashed to pieces on the rocks and only a few of the passengers 
escaped with their lives. One of the merchants who was 
saved had with him a slave girl who clung on to a board at 
the stern of the junk. The merchant offered a reward of 
ten pieces of gold to anyone who would rescue her, and one 
of the sailors—a man from Hormuz—succeeded in bringing 


102 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


her safe to land ; but he refused the proffered reward, saying, 
‘‘T did it only for the sake of God.”” Thesame night the vessel 
with the presents was thrown up on shore and all the 
passengers drowned, and Ibn Battiitah had the melancholy 
task of burying the members of the embassy with whom he 
had left Delhi and reciting over them the prayers for the dead. 
Ibn Battiitah’s vessel got safely away to sea and he heard 
no news of it, until some months later he fell in with two 
of his missing slaves, who told him that all his belongings 
were scattered, without chance of recovery. For some time 
he debated in his mind whether or not he should return to 
Delhi and inform the Sultan of the fate of the embassy, 
but he wisely decided against running the risk of putting 
himself again in the power of this irascible monarch. But 
he was much perplexed, and spent the greater part of his 
time in the mosque reading the Qur’an ; at first he read it all 
through once a day, but later read the whole of the sacred 
volume through twice each day, and so he continued for three 
months. Finally he made his way to the Maldive Islands 
where he was invested with the office of judge, already 
referred to.} 

The other extract is interesting as showing the kind of 
misapprehension that might give rise to some of the marvellous 
stories the Muhammadan travellers related on their return 
home. Ibn Battiitah tells how he was caught in the monsoon 
somewhere in the China or Java Sea; for forty-two days his 
vessel was driven by the storm, till the sailors lost their 
reckoning and had no idea of where they were ; the rain fell 
in torrents and for ten whole days they could not see the sun. 
Very early one morning the clouds lifted, and twenty miles 
off they sighted a mountain rising out of the sea, and the 
wind carried them rapidly towards it. The sailors were 
terrified, saying, ‘‘We are nowhere near dry land and we 
know of no mountain in this sea ; if the wind dashes us against 
it, we are all lost men.’”? Then all those on board humbled 
themselves before God and renewed their vows of repentance, 
offered fervent supplications to Allah, and sought the 
intercession of the Prophet. The merchants vowed to 
bestow alms in abundance, and Ibn Battiitah wrote their 
vows down for them in a note-book. The wind dropped 


1 Op. cit., iv, pp. 94-6, 105. 


ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 103 


a little, and when the sun rose they saw the mountain high 
up in the air, with clear sky between it and the sea. All the 
passengers were amazed ; but Ibn Battiitah noticed that the 
sailors were weeping and bidding one another farewell; 
and when he asked them what was the matter, they replied, 
‘“What we thought was a mountain, is a roc; if it catch 
sight of us it will certainly destroy us.’’? It was then less 
than ten miles off from them. But by the grace of God, a 
favourable wind arose and carried them in the opposite 
direction; so they saw no more of the roc, and had no 
opportunity of finding out its real shape. 


1 Ibid., iv, pp. 305-6. 


CHAPTER VI 


TRADE AND COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 
A.D. 800-1200 


By BARON A. MEYENDORFF 


Es an earlier chapter the most prominent features of 

travel in the Dark Ages, the Christian pilgrimages, 
were considered down to about the end of the eighth century 
and we then turned to consider two special aspects of the 
succeeding period, the travels of the Vikings and the Arabs. 
Our last chapter carried us right down to the end of the 
Middle Ages, and we must now return to examine another 
aspect of travel at the beginning of the ninth century. The 
main motive of the travellers whose narratives have come 
down to us from the period a.p. 800-1200 is still, as before, 
that of pilgrimage. 

Two quotations from the oldest monument of Russian 
travels '—the pilgrimage of the Abbot Daniel of Kiev to the 
Holy Land about 1106-7 will suffice to illustrate this 
and also both the moral and national assets of European 
development still prevailing, or at least surviving, in our 
times. ‘Many virtuous people,’ so we read in the introduction 
of the narrative, ‘ practising good works and charity to the 
poor, reach the holy places without leaving their homes... . 


Others ... after having visited them... boast as if 
they had done something meritorious and thus lose the 
fruit of their labour...’ A_ still more fervent feeling 


of national consciousness, at a time when no political unity 
existed among the Russian people, strikes our ear when 
we read the following words addressed by the Abbot Daniel 
to Prince Baldwin: ‘ My prince... for the love of God 
and out of regard for the Russian Princes ... allow me 
to place my lamps on the Holy Sepulchre in the name of the 
whole land of Russia.’ . . . And what a joy when the 

1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, London, 1897, vol. iv, C. R. 


Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, and R. Histor. Soc. Transactions, 
vol. xiv. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 105 


lamps of the Russians kindled and the miracle of the fire from 
Heaven had thus been accomplished, whereas the lamps 
placed by the Latins did not shine. The satisfaction which 
this neglect of the Latin worshippers on the part of the 
Divine Power caused to our abbot indicates clearly enough 
another momentous element, that of religious rivalry, which 
tends to prove more resistent against the action of time than 
anything else in the East of Europe to-day. 

Besides the travels of the pilgrims, the Vikings, and the 
Arabs in our period, there were two other types of travellers 
who added considerably to the knowledge of the world among 
the Western peoples, namely the Jews, among whom Benjamin 
of Tudela? may be considered the most prominent, and the 
German merchants and warriors in the Baltic,? a category 
of travellers which is not mentioned in Professor C. R. 
Beazley’s Dawn of Modern Geography, otherwise so rich in 
information and so stimulating for further research. 

Alongside them we may place the narratives of diplomatic 
missions such as the two missions of Luitprand to Byzantium 
in A.D. 957 and A.D. 968, the early commercial enterprises of 
the Frisian, Italian and German towns. Our attention 
here will be mainly directed to an examination of the bases 
of our knowledge of the east of Europe. 

The beginning of our period, as Marquardt puts it in his 
East European and East Asiatic Rambles,® referring to the 
ninth and tenth centuries, coincides with the formation 
of the ethnological body of Europe. The modern independence 
of the minor nationalities, like the Finns, Esthonians, 
Letts and Lithuanians, and the aggrandisement of territory 
allotted to some others were not only due to their demands 
for national emancipation from alien rule but also to a doctrine 
of restoration of the ethnological border supposed to comprise 
a homogeneous racial organization. Hence the specific 
form of East European land reform, dispossessing or despoiling 
the racial or legal successors of the conquering minorities. 


1 The latest English version from a thirteenth century MS. by M.N. 
Adler, London, 1907. 

* The famous edition of the Origines Livoniae sacrae et civilis seu 
Chronicon Livonicum vetus was dedicated by J. D. Gruber (1740) to 
George II with reference to his ancestor: NHenrici Leonis, Slavorum 
domitoris. 

® Osteuropaeische und Ostasiatische Streifzuge. 


106 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The latter were sometimes the representatives and often 
the unpleasant agents of the two universal principles of the 
European community, the Empire and the Papacy, of which 
the latter has remained an important component of Kuropean 
civilization. The beginning of modern Europe has been traced 
back to the partition of Verdun, A.D. 843, to the progress 
of the Christian missions, to the competing influence of the 
Muhammadan culture, to the zenith of Scandinavian activity — 
exploring, raiding, conquering, colonizing—to the decisive 
breach between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church, 
to the new national formations in the East, including the 
political growth of various principalities and towns in the 
Russian plain. Such were the features of the ninth century, 
followed by some symptoms of fresh life in nationality, 
language, literature, Christian philosophy, Christian political 
ambition, and the commercial expansion of the Italian 
cities. Towards the end of our period the Christian world 
of Europe was chequered with disaster. The destruction 
of the Levantine outposts of Latin Christendom, the paralysis 
of the Byzantine power, the Mongol rule in Asia and all over 
the Russian plain were already imminent (1240). Itis difficult 
to find a clue among the vague and confused movements 
of these obscure centuries, and the historian often tries to 
operate with a very few general and preconceived assumptions 
derived from his own experience and immediate observation. 
Thus Heyd, the historian of the trade of the time, makes the 
rather surprising assumption that the Jews during the 
internecine wars among the Christians, were circulating 
freely amid the warring peoples without arousing suspicion 
and were consequently making large profits.1_ This estimate 
of the advantages of the almost extra-territorial position 
of the Jew, Heyd derives apparently from his observation 
of modern, even of very recent and apparently temporary 
and sporadic conditions of toleration. Again in another 
instance Professor Golubinsky, who ranks first among the 
historians of the Russian Church, examines the narrative 
of the Russian Chronicle, known as the Chronicle of Nestor, 
showing the Kiev Prince Vladimir making his choice from 
among the various teachings of the Christian Churches and 
giving the preference to the Greek or Byzantine Rite, adopting 

1 W. Heyd, Histoive du Commerce du Levant, i, 125. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 107 


the same method of competitive examination (A.D. 988) 
as the Prince of the Khozars some time earlier is reported 
to have followed in selecting the Hebrew doctrine. Itis not the 
composite origin of the Chronicle with its multifarious layers 
of various authorship and age, nor the two centuries which 
separate the supposed author of the Chronicle from the event 
described, nor the fact that the earliest existing MS. belongs 
to the year 1377, that determines the more critical attitude 
adopted by Professor Golubinsky towards the relevant tale, 
as compared with many of his predecessors, among whom he 
mentions Professor Soloviev. It is the assumption of the 
universal and permanent value of a psychological observation 
which he thus raises to the level of a psychological law. 
Professor Golubinsky understands that the human mind 
does not admit of a vacuum, that therefore Prince Vladimir 
must have given up his heathen faith before the new concepts 
could have penetrated into his mind. Hence, the picture 
of a detached selective process being excluded, the whole 
story must be discarded as psychologically improbable. We 
see here how the real and deep learning of a first class 
historian is dependent upon the assumption of an untrained 
psychologist, and it is the latter which in the given case 
conducts and supervises the historical research, though it is 
outside our present scope to examine the validity of the 
psychological law referred to by Golubinsky.' 

In dealing with a period so obscure as the one here treated 
and one concerning which our information is so scattered, 
it is essential for us to avoid as far as possible the use of 
preconceived assumptions and the reading back of modern 
conditions into medieval times. We certainly distinguish 
between economic, political, and military activities in our 
modern definitions of human conduct, but as we actually 
meet them in the practice of the Middle Ages, those branches 
may occasionally blend, or combine, or replace one another 
in a remarkable manner, so as to give rise to varieties 
intermediate between those which are commonly regarded as 
typical, when we say ‘ travel’, ‘trade’, ‘war’. It might sound 
paradoxical, but we are almost led to assume that in the 


1 In his work on Canonization (Moscow, 1903) Golubinsky bases his 
negative attitude on another psychological fact, namely that at the age 
of 30 men of excessive sensuality ‘ do not come to repentance ’. 


108 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Middle Ages between A.D. 800 and 1200 peace and war were 
undifferentiated. 

The common basis of travel and intercourse is the road 
or route ; the mere existence of a route as a fairly constant 
or permanent link between distant parts of the inhabited 
globe is an important indication of a complex social, economic 
and political system, the expression of varied supra-tribal 
interests and of an extensive interdependence between 
groups scattered over large sections of the known world. 
The Roman Empire was one of such systems, and the roads 
were one of its expressions. 

The first question which arises is that of the Roman trade 
routes. Which of them survived down to our period, which 
were the new routes corresponding to the regrouping of the 
populations, connecting the new and old centres of civilization 
and maintaining the exchange of goods? This exchange 
had already become an essential of social life in the countries 
surrounding the Mediterranean and large tracts of the 
Hinterland with its developed provincial life ? After the fall 
of the Empire we still hear of trade in skins, hides, wool, 
leather, feathers, whalebone, honey, wax, timber, ships, 
various kinds of textiles as linen, muslin, silk, brocades, dye 
stuffs like purple, scents, ornaments, glassware, pearls, precious 
stones, metal goods, arms, coins, and last, but not least, 
foodstuffs, fish, oil, spices, cereals (which require special 
attention as to their mode of distribution), beverages (wine, 
beer, spirits), earthenware. 

This list of commodities covers a great part of the goods 
mentioned incidentally in narratives of medieval travel. 
It would be interesting to draw up a list comprising the sources 
whence the goods were drawn, their destination, and the route 
which they are reported to have followed. This would help 
us to understand the commercial geography of our period, 
and would indicate the changes caused by political events 
bringing about the breakdown of one trade route and the 
formation of new ones, just as it was in our days with 
regard to the countries engaged in the great war, when the 
one main requisite of the trade route, the security of traffic, 
could not be maintained, or when the communication ceased 
to be possible owing to internal disorder. Thus cotton- 
growing Turkestan reverted after 1917 to wheat cultivation. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 109 


Spruner and Menke in their Atlas of Medieval Geography 
(1880) have tried to project on their maps among other 
information relating to ethnology, political boundaries, etc., 
indications relating to the routes found in medieval 
sources and compiled by the respective experts. On one 
of their maps (pl. 63) under the heading ‘The States and 
Travels of the Northmen’ (Staaten und Fahrten der 
Normannen) we see a yellow line running from Gothland to 
the estuary of the Neva and Lake Ladoga, thence southward 
across the Russian plain as far as Cherson, and from 
Cherson across the Black Sea direct to Constantinople. 
Westward from Gothland a line shows the overland and sea 
communication to the Mediterranean centres and thence to 
Constantinople, thus completing the circular route. This 
circular route at different points on the Atlantic in Spain, 
at Venice and Genoa, at Constantinople, on the Dnieper 
from Bolgar on the Volga through Novgorod, is connected 
with the routes coming from Baghdad, the principal city 
trading eastward with India and China. What was the 
meaning of this colossal network? To what extent would 
it be an instrument of world trade and world travel under 
the conditions of universal warfare, prevailing between 
800-1200 especially in the Eastern half of Europe? It 
is striking that there existed a comparatively wide knowledge 
of the possibility of a circular travel route from Constanti- 
nople through Russia,! Scandinavia, around Western Europe or 
by land to Rome and back to the point of departure, without 
it being practicable to traverse it otherwise than by means 
of a military expedition. 

The only mention of any one having attempted the route 
we find, if we are not mistaken, in the Russian Chronicle 
referring to the Apostle Andrew’s journey from Cherson to 
Rome ‘where he told about the wonders observed on his way 
through the Russian lands and the steam baths delighted 
in by the natives’. The chronicle asserts the existence of the 
route as a means of communication and intercourse and 
gives for our epoch a number of instances as to the use of the 
section between Scandinavia and Constantinople favoured by 
Varangian commercial and military enterprise, a section of 


1 Professor M. I. Rostovtsev lifts the veil from an obscure past in his 
Ivanians and Greeks in South Russia (Oxford Press), 1922. 


110 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


intermittent land and water traffic of necessarily limited 
tonnage, demanding more than one season, complicated means 
of transport, boat building and package, and victualling, 
especially for the slaves who were one of the most important 
commodities transported. The trade has not yet been 
sufficiently analysed on the basis of Byzantine and Russian 
sources. The Scandinavian sources apparently speak more 
of the glory of their kimsmen on the Austrweger, the Eastway, 
than of the actual practicability of the route across the 
Russian plain, which had probably been as well, if not better, 
exploited by the Greeks before the Christian era. Adam of 
Bremen had only a vague notion of the possibility of getting 
from Scandinavia to Constantinople and he did not know 
that it involved river navigation. He calls Kiev the finest 
jewel of Greece, thus mixing the Scandinavian term for 
Russia, Gardarika (the country of the towns), with Grikland.* 
Only one Scandinavian merchant can be named at 
Constantinople about the year 1000. The Emperor 
Constantine VII’s? description of the visit annually paid to 
the port of Constantinople by the Russo-Varangian Princes 
and their hosts deserves to be quoted. The goods brought 
to Constantinople must have been chiefly res sese moventes, 
to use the term of the Roman law, namely slaves, and in 
addition some wax and furs such as later reached Venice. 
Everything was collected at home as tribute during the 
previous season. The goods must have been in a poor 
condition owing to their transport in canoes, povdévda, 
probably simply trunks hollowed by fire, unless the martial 
tradesmen helped themselves to better vessels such as 
those owned by the Greeks of Cherson and arrived before 
Constantinople as a threatening fleet, though as a rule they 
reached only Mesembria. This commerce and the description 
of the Russian invasions a century earlier in the ornamented 
homilies of the Patriarch Photius (A.D. 865) certainly do not 
impress the reader as a manifestation of international trade. 
The Eastern section of the great circular route turns into a 
comparatively secondary, almost local, approach to the 
luxuries of the East by rather primitive savages who provide 
chiefly slaves, probably an illgotten gain, to the more advanced 


1 Heyd, op. cit., pp. 73 and 77. 
2 A.D. QII-59. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 111 


Kasterners through the Greeks as middlemen. The Arabs 
also were then manifesting their high business morality in 
this branch of commerce. The Russo-Byzantine treaties 
of 907, 911, 945 and 971, mentioned by the Russian chronicle, 
of which three are indirectly referred to and even those 
unacknowledged. as treaties by the Byzantine sources, 
have until late served to represent the Russian trader in 
a more cultured attitude. The description of the Russian 
Prince Svyatoslav on the Danube near Dorystolon (modern 
Silistria), A.D. 972, gives a vivid picture of the primitive 
chieftain and his army of 22,000 men, each of whom received 
one pediuvos (nearly 12 gallons) of wheat for victuals 
on their return homeward. At the same time a special 
mention is made of maintaining the ancient ‘friendly’ 
trade relations with Constantinople. 

The Byzantine-Scandinavo-Russian road shows a series 
of phenomena where invasion alternates with trade in rapid 
succession. The irregularities and risks were obviously 
considerable. The development of Greek influence in Kiev, 
crowned in A.D. 988 by the triumph of the Greek Christian 
mission, nevertheless gave to this centre the _ brilliant 
appearance of an important and rich town, where according 
to a German description (in the chronicle of Thitmarus, 
Bishop of Magdeburg, referring to the year 4a.D. 1018), forty 
churches, eight market places, and a multitude of fugitive 
slaves and ‘ Dani veloces’ were equally striking. And, in 
the north, Novgorod gains already the social characteristics 
of a commercial commonwealth, later affiliated to the German 
Hansa. Let us add to these few points the Arab trade along 
the Volga to the town of Bolgar? where the traders from 
Novgorod are met, if they have not been down the river as 
far as Itil, the capital of the Khozars, near the Caspian Sea, and 
we get a puzzling picture of contradictory elements standing 
for what may be called travel and travellers, but fluctuating 
from piracy, pillage and invasion, conquest, military 

1 Professor V. I. Sergeyevich, Lectures and Researches (St. Peters- 
burg, 1910, p. 627), writes: The Byzantine sources ignore the four 
treaties mentioned by the Russian chronicle. 

2 J. Marquardt has recently tried to discover new indications for 
the location of this and other places along the Volga route. Ungarische 


Jahrbicher, pp. 261-334, December, 1924, Ein Arabischer Bericht 
uber die arktischen (uralischen) Laender aus dem X Jhdt. 


112 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


organization, tribute and tax collecting to trade and 
missionary work. 

The circular road with its subsidiaries—White Sea-Volga, 
Novgorod-Volga_ (Bolgar), Novgorod-Dnieper— does not 
appear, as has been too readily assumed by some writers, 
to be the economic breathing canal of Europe ; it appears as 
an aggregate of independent sectors of unequal importance 
with occasional intermittent intercommunication leading 
to the exchange of goods from one end of the road to the 
other only through a succession of semi-fiscal and semi- 
military commercial acts. The finds of Arabic coins in 
the North of Europe, without very clear evidence of a 
corresponding delivery of goods by these countries to the 
middlemen dealing with the Arabs, does not indicate what 
we call trade in the usual sense; nor are we certain that the 
Scandinavians, even the Swedes who according to Adam 
of Bremen (A.D. 1076) were rich in cereals and honey, 
were really exporting any goods that after a succession of 
exchanges could bring wealth to Constantinople. 

The trading capacities of the Scandinavians at this early 
date are hard to credit, and indeed according to the Norwegian 
scholar, Dr. A. Bugge, his countrymen were nothing but 
seafaring agriculturists in constant need of cereals. The 
only regular export from Sweden was the fighting host, 
which until the ninth century levied blackmail from 
Novgorod. Probably this tribute was paid in Arabic 
coins and local furs, hides, tools, and other goods of the 
kind which in the fifteenth century formed the peasants’ 
dues! in that part of Northern Russia, as the contemporary 
surveys show. 

The political adjustment along the Eastern as well as 
along the Western half of the circular road was obviously 
lagging behind the economic needs to such a degree that the 
latter either became extinct or had to find new routes of 
communication. Of these the Western Dvina route became an 
important trunk road at the close of our period. The 
more ambitious Eastern seaway of the late sixteenth century, 
from England to the White Sea and thence to the Caspian, 


1 Sergeyevich in vol. iii of his Russian Antiquities (St. Petersburg, 
1911), p. 108. C. Brinkmann, Die Aeliesten Grundbucher von Novgorod, 
in Vierteljahrsschrift fur Soc. u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1911. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 113 


which had only a shortlived importance, will give us an 
adequate: idea of the importance in trade and politics of 
the river routes, for a long time the only means by which 
the inner parts of a continent were accessible from outside. 

Going back to the crucial question of the meaning of the 
colossal network of assumed trade routes, we must refer 
to the appreciation of its value by the Belgian historian, 
Professor Pirenne. His main proposition is based upon 
the assumption that some economic interdependence of 
nations still survived at the fall of the Roman Empire. 
Marseilles, Professor Pirenne states, maintained its position 
as a port long after the Germanicinvasion. The latest written 
papyrus which has been identified comes from A.D. 787, 
and this date corresponds to the period of the hostile Arab 
rule on the southern shores of the Mediterranean extending 
from Syria to Spain. The golden coin solidus aureus obtained 
from Byzantium still continues to circulate as a currency 
in the West between the eighth and ninth centuries but is 
tending to disappear. Islam having blocked the western part 
of the Mediterranean in the seventh and eighth centuries, the 
European continent is bound to rely for its requirements 
from Constantinople and the East in general upon two lines 
of communications only. ‘The one passes through the Levant 
from Venice to Constantinople, the other from Flanders via 
Russia down the Dnieper to Constantinople, or down the 
Volga to Baghdad. At the same time Professor Pirenne 
does not surprise us when he stresses with insistence the 
fact that external trade was less important than under 
the Roman Empire, so that the towns of Gaul fell into 
decay, while international trade was hampered by strict 
regulations in accordance with the requirements of the self- 
supporting natural economy of the rural estate, which then 
became the main organization of production. What there 
could be of external trade was due to the achievements 
of the martial adventurers who, like St. Godric, were breaking 
the rules in a spirit of freedom and risk, until international 
commerce was later captured by the large trading communities, 
such as Venice, Pisa and Genoa. But this process was already 

1 The lectures delivered by Professor Pirenne at University College, 


London, have since been published in book form—Medieval Cities : 
Their Origin and the Revival of Tvade (Oxford Press, 1925). 


I 


114 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


beginning during our period, though it was subject to many 
irregularities and accidents, forming, as we believe, the 
very essence of medieval travel in the broadest sense of 
the word. 

Before we attempt to trace its articulation, which 
indicates the movements of the growing organization of 
travel, let us contrast the above sketch with the generally 
accepted view.t The Eastern part of the circular route is 
treated thus: ‘‘Northmen of Denmark and Norway were the 
terror of all the coasts of Europe, and established themselves 
in England and Ireland, in France and Sicily. From the 
eighth to the eleventh century a commercial route from India 
passed through Kharism and Novgorod to the Baltic, and 
immense quantities of Arabian coins have been found in 
Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gothland, and are 
preserved at Stockholm.” The wording of a more recent 
passage on the Northmen sounds less confident. ‘‘ The 
coins .. . prove how closely the enterprise of Northmen and 
of the Arabs intertwined.” The expression ‘enterprise’ 
seems an especially happy one for its vagueness. To 
characterize the predominant view one could quote popular 
textbooks on history with passages such as this:,‘ What 
do you bring us?’ the merchant is asked, in an old English 
dialogue. ‘I bring skins, silks, costly gems and gold,’ he 
answers, ‘ besides garments, pigments, wine, oil and ivory, 
with brass and copper, and tin, silver and gold, and such 
like.’ We are unable to check the exact value of the old 
English dialogue. 

Let us remember that the Northern shore of the Black Sea 
was successively occupied by more or less ephemeral nomads : 
Goths, Avars, Turks, Uzes, Huns, Bulgars, Pechenegs, the 
tolerant Khozars and Kumans, this list being probably in- 
complete, while Bosphoros or Panticapeum (modern Kerch), 
Olbia (on the mouth of the Bug), Odessos (near the present 
Varna), Cherson (the Russian Sebastopol), called by the 
Russian Chronicles Korsun, perpetuated the memory of the 
past and retained to the end of the twelfth century the aspect 
of Greek settlements. Trade had to accommodate itself to the 

i Such a view is shortly expressed in the article ‘‘ Geography ”’ in 


the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. 1897, and may be compared with the 
edition of 1910, vol. xi. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 115 


respective conditions of domination or subjection among the 
intermediate tribes in the historical mosaic of races along the 
trade route converging to the Black Sea or to the Caspian, and to 
their material culture, which was conditioned by slave raiding, 
hunting in general, and agriculture. The following utterance 
taken from the Russian Chronicle! throws a sidelight on the 
situation. The young Prince Svyatoslav, the same whom 
Leo Diaconus described, declares to his mother and the 
host, ‘I do not like to stay in Kiev; I want to live at 
Pereyaslav 2 on the Danube, because that is the centre of 
my land, as all goods go there: from Greece gold, brocade, 
wine, and various fruits or spices; from the land of the Czechs 
and Hungarians silver and horses; from Rus hides, wax, 
honey, and slaves.’ These words suggest a special aspect 
of trade, perhaps its utilization as a basis for raising toll. 
Svyatoslav apparently intended to secure various advantages 
by his subsequent nefarious expedition, to which reference 
has already been made. During the retreat he was captured 
with his army and put to death by the Pechenegs 
(Patzinaciti), who controlled a part of the trade route and 
who acted either under dictation from Byzantium in return 
for advantages amounting to a tribute paid to them, or at 
their own discretion. 

There is just one more trait which is at first sight surprising 
in the Russian Chronicle. Describing the military expedition 
of Prince Oleg (A.D. 907), the semi-legendary basis of Russian 
claims on Constantinople, the writer speaks with disgust 
of the sufferings inflicted upon the Greek population, saying 
‘and many other things did the Rus, as warriors usually 
(or often) do’. A tribute is exacted from the Byzantines 
amounting to 12 grivna per head, and in each of the 2,000 
ships there were 40 men, for later the Chronicle speaks of 
forty oars. Furthermore the expedition returns with new 
sails, bread, wine, meat, fish, spices and anchors. This booty, 
should the text stand the test, serves as an indication of 
the goods appreciated by the invaders. The goods mentioned 
are not fit for further exportation to the North; on the 


1 Laurentian MS. a. 6477. 
2 Formerly called Martianopolis, the modern village Preslava on 
the right bank of the St. George arm of the Danube. 


116 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


contrary all were for immediate consumption or use. A 
handful of precious stones, some yards of silk or brocade, 
would not alter the position substantially; the expedition 
would still not indicate a commercial war. This throws a 
light on the value of the great route to Scandinavia as a 
commercial thoroughfare and would appear to show that its 
value has been much exaggerated. 

The northern portion of the route was controlled by the 
Norsemen, to whom Novgorod then paid a tribute in order to 
secure peace. The Arabs knew the lower Volga only and 
nothing beyond the town of Bolgar. It might be noticed here 
that Professor C. R. Beazley, describing the trade between 
Russia and Constantinople as barter, enumerates as Greek 
export goods : silks, stuffs, gold, wine, and fruit which were 
exchanged for Russian furs, honey, wax, corn and slaves. 
The corn item seems exceedingly dubious, for about a 
thousand years had passed since the Black Sea had been 
bordered by wheat-growing districts,! and Russian agriculture 
was yet in its infancy. Oleg’s booty, supposing that the whole 
passage is among those parts of the Chronicle which may be 
admitted as a true record, is the more suggestive as this 
same Prince Oleg, when taking possession of Kiev, was 
admitted into the town as a ‘merchant’. This would mean 
that there were traders along the Dnieper River eager to 
secure the right to pass through the various territories, 
which were under the control of several conflicting powers ; 
but this is but slight evidence as to trade relations between 
Constantinople and Scandinavia. We can glean here and 
there an indication of the nature of the protection of river 
traffic in this remote past. The Russian Chronicle 2 mentions 
an expedition of the Kiev Prince Mstislav to protect against 
the pillaging Polvtsy the trade route used by Greek merchants 
for the supply of salt and another commodity, the nature 
of which the unintelligible term zalozhny (the merchant 
being called zalozhnik) does not disclose to us. It may be 
assumed that this trade was a dutiable occupation and hence 


1 Max Ebert, Sudrussland in Altertum, Bonn, 1921. J. W. Pratt on 
A. M. Shepard’s Sea Power in Ancient History, Boston, 1924, and 
Rostovtsey, op. cit. 


* For the year A.M. 6675, i.e. A.D. 1165-6. 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 117 


was protected by the respective territorial authorities 
interested in the gathering of the toll. 

With regard to the eastern part of the circular route, 1.e. 
the route across Russia, during the period covering the 
eighth to the twelfth centuries, one may say on behalf of Central 
and Western Europe that the remote parts of the East 
had no direct commerce with Europe,! but only through 
many intermediaries at a costly rate and with infinite 
risk from pirates and enemies, and the trade there was 
to a great extent dependent on booty. 

Let us try to understand the connexion and _ transitions 
from booty through tribute to trade and travel. It might be 
reasonable to assume that at the beginning of our period 
the force which actuated the removal of individuals and 
groups beyond the region of settlement was chiefly the 
necessity or desire to acquire goods by force, or in return 
for goods and services rendered. The cynic might add 
that commercial and military enterprise are fused almost more 
intimately than in our days. The evolution thus to our 
days would be: from war to trade and from trade back to 
war. From the eighth to the twelfth century we can find 
distinct traces of the formation of a trading class, and travel 
becomes chiefly an accompaniment of commerce. The evolution 
of the Arabs and Northmen from pirates into traders was 
observed long since at a time when the encouragement 
of trade became a principle of politics. 

The mere spoliation of the invaded country may contain a 
variety of economic phenomena and does not exclude acts 
of generosity. The consequences of the act of depredation 
depend upon the nature of the goods seized, such as land, slaves, 
women, foodstuffs, etc. Some require a more permanent 
cultivation like cereals, others maintenance like slaves; 
compulsory Jabour requires organization and a number 
of objects that presuppose the existence of artisans 
producing arms and tools, ornaments, textiles, and furs. 
The accumulation of the booty by the individual 


1 See expressions found in an early seventeenth century document 
published by Mme. Lubimenko in The English Historical Review, 1914. 
A Project for the Acquisition of Russia by James I in 1612, a striking 
illustration of the organization of trade through foreign lands along a 
river system from the White Sea to the Caspian. 

2 A. L. Schlozer, History of Commerce, 1761. 


118 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


invader and its appropriation are different from the 
accumulation under a chief or a constituted authority, 
and so is the subsequent complicated rationing of the output 
or result of the expedition. In case of seizure of specie 
(coins, metal, and other mediums of exchange), especially 
if it has been designed, individual smuggling and hoarding 
is made easier, and this might serve as a fund for trade ; 
rationing will be laborious, it will be difficult to counter open 
or latent resistence by ‘ vested interests’. Accidental or 
casual yield, correlated with the respective forms of social 
and political organization, with a distributive authority of 
some sort even in the occupation of new land, may and will 
tend, together with the preparing of a periodical or frequent 
repetition of the same expedition, to secure a permanent or 
recurrent yield by means of the application of more 
sophisticated forms of ransom and probably later tribute. 
The organization of the entrepreneur or aggressor adjusts 
itself to needs of production. The exaction of a permanent 
tribute and its distribution is an exceedingly complicated 
economic task, as could be illustrated by the only 
communistie state we know, where there is a main source 
of provision. 

The periodical raising of a tribute in kind, which was 
apparently peculiar to the Mongol rule in Russia, presupposes 
together with the organization of pressure, if not the 
organization at least the toleration and growth of crafts 
among the tributary population. The beginnings of our 
period are rich in instances of more or less organized annual 
tributes and ransom. Novgorod paid annually till the tenth 
century 300 grivny tribute to the Varangians to have peace. 
Svyatoslav in A.D. 901 exacted ransoms.2 The various 


1 Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, ii, 291 and 323. Those who 
resisted were made slaves, individually or the whole family, or the 
women only—we do not know. Nor do we know anything about the 
fate of the slaves “were they sold in their native land or exported ? 
These and similar questions arise when the Mongol rule is to be con- 
sidered. In Professor Vinogradov’s Outline of Historical Jurisprudence, 
i, 259, he contrasts slavery in Muhammadan countries with primitive 
agricultural slavery and serfdom. 

* Professor Klyuchevsky remarks that the names of the traders 
mentioned in the Russo-Byzantine trade agreements are the names of 
the agents of the Kiev prince. They are received as allies, not as traders 
(Kurs, i, 173, 4th Russ. ed.). 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 119 


northern neighbours of the Byzantine Empire obtained 
a fairly regular income by blackmail, fluctuating between 
tribute for keeping quiet and ‘ wages’ for troubling some 
third party. 

Among the various kinds of tribute we can distinguish 
the fluctuating tribute casually obtained by the Rus from 
the neighbouring Baltic tribes from the fixed and almost 
assessed tribute such as is mentioned in the interesting 
passage referring to Ohthere’s tale to King Alfred (about 
A.D. 890): ‘‘ The principal wealth of the people of Helgaland 
consists in the tribute the Fynnes pay them . . . skins 
of wild beasts, feathers of birds, whalebones, cables, and 
tacklings for shippes made of whales’ or seales’ skinnes. 
Every man payeth according to his ability. The richest pay 
ordinarily 15 cases of Marterns, 5 Rane deere skinnes and 
one beare, ten bushels of feathers, a coat of a beare’s skinne, 
two cables three score elles long a piece, the one made of 
whales’ skin the other of seale’s.””! Another instance of 
assessed tribute we find in the Russian Chronicle. The 
Khozars claim a sword from each Polyan hearth and are 
frightened as by a bad omen when they get swords with 
double-edged blades. The dues payable for free passage 
are also a kind of tribute more or less regulated, stipulated, 
or exacted ad hoc. It was the favourite profit of the nomads 
threatening the communication between Kiev and 
Constantinople. 

It seems clear that the regular booty and more so the 
tribute presupposes the organization of forces (hosts) and, 
if permanently arranged, the security of production. The 
oppressors often have to become organizers of supply, and 
the consent or submission of the subject races becomes 
an important element of stability.2 The organizing capacity 
of the masters is one of the requirements of progress which 
it is most difficult to appreciate correctly. A rationalistic 
interpretation of history will simply reject it as a stage of 
unjustifiable oppression. One of the transitory stages 

1 Hakluyt, ed. 1903, pp. II-I4. 

2 Th. Talbot, The Manorial Roll of the Isle of Man, 1511-15. ‘ At 
the end of the eighth century the Scandinavian conquerors imposed 


upon the Celtic population a new division of land into six shedyngs 
or ship districts.’ 


120 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


from tribute to trade is the farming out of the tribute. As 
the tax farmer works for the ruling power and commerce 
appears as a subsidiary branch in the tax collector’s enterprise, 
the system is the reverse of the military slave-hunting 
organization, where the ruling power works for private, 
mostly foreign, traders. This latter institution was still 
surviving, and perhaps even developing, at the beginning 
of our period, whereas the farming out of tribute and taxation 
belongs to a later time, reviving very ancient devices of 
administration. An unlimited exploitation appears only 
possible if there is no escape for the tributary tribe. The 
taxation of hunting tribes or individual hunters will 
necessarily be closely related with some form of trading and 
consent, because a regular return is only obtainable when the 
hunters have food and equipment. Ohthere’s tale ought to be 
examined from this point of view. The comparatively 
rapid Slavicization of the Swedes who controlled the Russian 
tribes and the survival of the national assemblies may have 
something to do with that type of taxation. Here then 
trade and primarily barter appear as a semi-private under- 
taking. The tribute collector might in some respect act 
as a publicanus or tribute farmer, with public authority and 
responsibility backed by his national organization, or else 
he merges with the tributary community and becomes 
one of its chiefs and organizers. This kind of transformation 
appears in the political career of the Scandinavian (Varangian) 
Princes on Russian soil. Under such conditions tribute, 
trade, and truce are interwoven with travel and exploration. 
The increase of output, the discovery of shorter and less 
endangered communications and means of transport are 
more a matter for political than private concern. Our modern ™ 
terminology is hardly fitted to represent the state of things we 
find described in the Byzantine or Russian sources. 

A succession of trade agreements was required to secure 
the conditions of transit, the remedies against injuries and 
damage, the protection of the trade route and of the traders 
and foreigners in general along the line leading from Gothland 
to Novgorod,! from Cherson to the Danube, from the Danube 


1 Professor C. R. Beazley in his introduction to Professor Nevill 
Forbes’s translation of the Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 (London, 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 121 


to Mesembria, the final port for the Russian ‘ vessels’, 
according to Constantine VII, and from Mesembria for the 130 
miles to Constantinople. 

There was the same pressing need in the case of the still 
longer line leading from Novgorod to the Caspian, or from 
Novgorod to the estuary of the Western Dvina, where 
Riga was gradually becoming an important centre. The 
sources from which we derive our scanty knowledge refer to 
fragments of those large and ambitious schemes of trade 
organization which haunted the peoples of the day but which 
hardly formed anything but shortlived,incomplete settlements. 
When the ports only, without the hinterland, were occupied 
by foreigners, we have perhaps the least oppressive form of 
obtaining goods, as long as the goods are being brought to 
the ports instead of being fetched and collected by the 
occupant of the port. From this initial period down to the 
formation of large territorial Empires one can hardly expect 
the travellers of the time to be much concerned with the 
advance of geographical knowledge. 

During our period there seems to have been a queer 
coexistence of general and vague notions of the possible 
lines of communication with very remote countries, together 
with legendary information slavishly repeated by generations 
of authors without any attempt to check the fateful traditions 
by contemporary experience. If Adam of Bremen and the 
Russian Chronicler at Kiev, who were presumably closely 
contemporary, both repeat the same details about the 
Amazones in what is now Finland, and if the same tale is 
told two centuries earlier by the Byzantine, Georgius 
Amartolus, who in his turn has borrowed it from older 
sources, such survival of legend seems to confirm that there 
was very little travel indeed in the time when they were 
writing. The maps of so late a period as the sixteenth 
century bear similar evidence of the very slow advance of 
geographical knowledge. If among the _ geographical 
tradition there were surviving indications of routes between 
the remotest parts of the world, this tends to show and to 
1914), gives a summary of the growth of the Republic, its empire, and 
its foreign relations. L. K. Goetz, Deutsch-Russische Handelsvertraege 


des Muttelalters, Hamburg, 1916, is also an important contribution 
for the non-Russian student of Russian history. 


122 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


confirm what recent writers seem to assume, namely the 
frequentation of such routes at a much earlier date when there 
was apparently more trade and travel and less fighting. 
The renaissance of the routes was not accomplished during 
the period under consideration. This general view however 
ought not to obscure certain features of international life 
even during the dark ages. These features are especially 
fascinating amidst the general insecurity. The hostage 
in enemy’s land, the intermarriage between the reigning 
princely families, the diplomatic negotiation, the hired 
warrior from foreign land, offer so many occasions for mutual 
observations of intense interest to the widely differing 
Christian and non-Christian peoples. 

The religious, non-political and non-material travel—the 
pilgrimage, with its spirit of otherworldliness, adds a peculiar 
charm to the epoch by the very contrast with its roughness. 
The immense variety of types, races and degrees of culture, 
to be overshadowed by a few, possibly by one system of 
religious and political thought, manifests perhaps for the first 
time the common basis of a still latent humanism, but still 
a mere dream, at the very eve of its failure. 

The conflux of people of various nationality at Alexandria, 
Baghdad, Damascus, in the Italian cities Amalfi, Genoa, 
Venice, at Constantinople, in comparatively out of the way 
places like Kiev, Novgorod, Wisby, at Itil and Bolgar on 
the Volga, at Prague and Ratisbon (Regensburg) on the 
Danube, and Jumna on the Oder, seems to indicate a 
considerable intensity of international life between the eighth 
and the twelfth centuries. This is, as it were, confirmed by 
the growing uniformity of international religious life, in 
the vast domains of the Patriarchate of the Western and 
Eastern Churches, and in the territories gained by Islam, 
as well as by the variety of countries where the Jews were 
domiciled. Does the difficulty resolve itself into the 
coexistence of a small number of world-centres keeping 
up the intercommunion of races inherited from the Roman 
Empire, some vanishing while new ones take their place, 
whereas the numbers of people engaged in this international 
life and the intensity of this life were very much on the ebb ? 
Is not Constantinople during our period more remote from 


COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 123 


Western Europe than in Roman times? Is there not a 
disruption of the forces which tend towards a renewed 
unity and fail because the international communion has no 
actual basis; the political disruption is too great, the religious 
unity not sufficient to restore the pax Romana, the process 
of consolidation of the larger nationalities too slow to facilitate 
travel and restore to the travellers the prominence which they 
once possessed and which is reserved to them in a later age. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE OPENING OF THE LAND ROUTES TO CATHAY 
By EILEEN Power, M.A., D.Lit. 


Ape century lying between 1245 and 1345 is of unique 
importance in the history of medieval travel, because 
for a brief period it brought into contact the East and the 
West, the two centres of the civilized world ; for during the 
Middle Ages it is true enough to say that the world had two 
centres, each of which thought that it was the only one, 
the great civilizations of India and China, proud and 
immemorially old, and the budding civilization of 
Christendom, then in all the vigour of its lusty youth. 

In a sense, of course, they had always been in contact. 
Once before they had met and mingled, when Alexander 
took his Hellenism westward and left an ineffaceable mark 
upon the faces of the Buddhas of Northern India. Once 
again they had, as it were, looked at each other without 
meeting, when Chinese traders met the agents of Rome at 
the craggy city of Tashkurgan, called ‘the Stone Tower ’, 
and unrolled their bales of silk on the banks of the Yarkand 
River.t And although all this had become a fairy tale to the 
men of the Middle Ages, they were still in contact with the 
Kast in the sense that they seasoned their dishes with spices 
from Ceylon and Java, set diamonds from Golconda in 
their rings, and carpets from Persia on their thrones, went 
splendidly clad in silks from China and played their 
interminable games of chess with ebony chessmen from 


1 See M. B. Charlesworth, The Tvade Routes of the Roman Empire 
(Cambridge, 1924), pp. 99-109. ‘ Here, indeed, these merchants, 
though they little knew it, stood at what is the very head and centre of 
all commerce for the Old World and the most ancient meeting-place 
on the whole earth; at this lonely point three civilizations, those of 
China, of India, and of the Hellenized Orient, met and gave in exchange 
their products, their wares, and their painting and art.’ But Sir Aurel 


Stein places ‘the Stone Tower’ at Daraut-Kurgan in the Karategin 
valley. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 125 


Siam. But for all that a black and heavy curtain shut the 
East and the West from each other’s sight. 

For although the thriving merchants of Venice and Genoa 
and Pisa grew rich upon the Eastern trade, they knew it 
only at its termini, the ports of the Levant. From China and 
India merchandise could take two roads to the West. One 
was a land route across Central Asia, ending upon the shores 
of the Black Sea, or passing southward to Baghdad. But 
though the Greeks of Constantinople and Trebizond did an 
active trade in Eastern merchandise coming by this route, 
and though Italians were already beginning to frequent 
the Black Sea ports, it was impossible for them to go further 
along the trade routes, for all across Central Asia lay the 
Turks, blocking the road to the East. The other road was a 
sea road, separated from the Mediterranean by two land- 
vestibules, the vestibule of Persia and Syria, and the vestibule 
of Egypt. In Palestine and Syria the Christians still held a 
remnant of the Crusading States, with a valuable row of ports, 
and by treaty with the sultans at their backdoor they were 
allowed to journey a few miles inland to the busy cities of 
Aleppo and Damascus. But beyond this, to the great mart 
of Baghdad, the centre for the whole district, and along the 
trade routes to the Persian Gulf, they might not go. Here 
again the Turks stood in their path. In Egypt, too, their 
galleys came to Alexandria and did a great trade, but by 
what road the camels brought their loads and where the 
Nile boats took on board their cargoes, the Frankish merchants 
did not know, for once more the Turks blocked them. 
Islam, the hereditary foe of Christendom, lay like a wall 
between Europe and all the trade routes to the East. 

But in the period which we have now to consider all 
this was changed. Italian merchants chaffered and Italian 
friars said Mass in the ports and cities of India and China, 
moved unhampered with their caravans on the great silk 
route across Central Asia, or passed through Persia to take 
ship on the long sea road. The East and the West for the 
first time came into direct contact from end to end. And 
if it be asked how this came about, the answer is an unexpected 
one—that it was the result of the conquests of a nomadic 
Mongol people from Central Asia of the same stock as the 
Turks, a people, moreover, which has come down in history 


126 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


with a reputation for unintelligent destruction equalled 
only by that of the Vandals. That people is best known 
under its medieval name of the Tartars. 

The Tartar conquests began at the beginning. of the 
thirteenth century, when Chinghiz Khan and his hordes 
came down from Mongolia and attacked the Chinese Empire, 
taking Peking in 1214 and by degrees, in the course of the 
next fifty years, extending their sway until they ruled almost 
the whole of Eastern Asia. They first turned westward 
in 1218 and the flood of conquest slowly spread right across 
Asia, over a large part of Russia, into Poland and Hungary, 
and all over Persia and part of Asia Minor, until by the 
death of Mangu Khan in 1259 one empire stretched from 
the Yellow River to the banks of the Danube, and from the 
Persian Gulf to Siberia. Nothing like it had ever been known 
in history before, for the Roman Empire was a mere midget 
in comparison, and nothing like it was to be known again until 
the great land empire of Russia in the nineteenth century. 
In the last half of the thirteenth century it- broke up into 
four khanates. The Great Khan himself ruled from Cambalue 
or Khanbalik (Peking) over the whole of China, Corea, 
Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet, taking tribute also from 
Indo-China, Burma and Java. The Chagatai Khanate, 
with its capital at Almalik (Kulja), stretched over Central 
Asia, Turkestan and Afghanistan. The Kipchak Khanate, 
or the Golden Horde, with its capital at Sarai on the Volga, 
covered the country north of the Caucasus, Russia, and part 
of Siberia. The Persian Ilkhanate, with its capital at 
Tauris (Tabriz) held sway over Persia, Georgia, Armenia, 
and part of Asia Minor. Nevertheless, although thus divided, 
the Tartars were essentially one people, acknowledging 
the sway of the Great Khan at Peking and communicating 
with each other by messengers across the length and breadth 
of Asia. 

The appearance of these wild horsemen, swift and savage 
beyond description, coming like an irresistible flood, a sort 
of terrible and overwhelming tidal wave, from the East at 
first struck horror into the soul of Europe, for it seemed 
as though they would continue their triumphant progress 
westward and ravage all Christendom to the sea. Twice 
they appeared, in 1222-3 and again in 1241. In 1288 Matthew 


— 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 127 


Paris tells how fear of them kept the people of Gothland 
and Friesland away from the Yarmouth herring fishery, 
and in 1241, when the Christian host. was heavily defeated 
at Lignitz and they ravaged Poland, Silesia, and Hungary, 
the Emperor Frederick II called upon Henry III of England 
and other princes for common action against this new 
‘Scourge of God’.1 Horror and disgust and fear were the 
sentiments which they aroused. 

But after 1241 the flood of conquest rolled back, and when 
next it rolled West again, it was seen to overwhelm not 
Christian kingdoms but the caliphates of Baghdad and Syria, 
establishing in the 50s Tartar for Muslim rule there, sacking 
Baghdad and extinguishing the Caliphate in 1258. For this 
reason this attitude of Europe began to undergo a change, 
and men saw in the Tartars not a menace to Christendom - 
but a possible ally against a common enemy. As Europeans 
got to know more about the Tartars, they learned that they 
were tolerant to all creeds, Buddhist, Muhammadan, Jewish 
and Christian, having no very strongly marked beliefs 
of their own. They began also to learn that there were 
large groups of Nestorian Christians still scattered throughout 
Asia. Europeans who visited the Tartar camp at Karakorum 
brought back news of ladies of high rank, wives and mothers 
of khans, who professed the Christian faith. Rumours 
of the conversion now of the Great Khan himself in Cathay, 
now of one or other of the lesser khans in Persia or Russia, 
kept rising, and men repeated also the famous legend 
of Prester John. All these things, together with the 
indisputable fact that the Tartars had laid the Muslim power 
low all over Asia, began to present them to Western rulers 
in a totally new light. Gradually there took shape the 
dream of converting the Tartars to Christianity and then 
forming a great Tartar-Christian alliance which should 
smite Islam hip and thigh, reconquer Palestine and Egypt, 
and succeed where crusades from the West alone had failed. 

From the middle of the thirteenth century, therefore, 


1 He puts his trust in God and hopes that by the combined efforts of 
Christendom these Tartars will be driven finally down to their Tartarus, 
ad sua Tartava Tartan detvudentur. The pun was likewise perpetrated by 
Matthew Paris, Innocent IV, and St. Louis! The Journey of Wiliam 
of Rubruck, ed. W. W. Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900), p. xix. 


128 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


it is essential to remember that Europe was no _ longer 
shrinking in terror from the Tartars, but on the contrary 
was looking upon them as potential converts and _ allies. 
Embassies were continually setting out to one or other of 
the centres of their power, Sarai on the Volga, the new 
Persian capital of Tabriz, or distant Cathay, from the Pope, 
or the King of France, or the King of England, with invitations 
to embrace Christianity and projects of alliance.1 Merchants 
also began to go thither to trade and Franciscan friars to 
preach, and by degrees a busy intercourse sprang up between 
East and West.? But before describing this intercourse 
at its height, some description must be given of the pioneers 
of Eastward travel, the two friars who first made the 
journey to Mongolia and brought back the first description 
of Tartar power in Asia to Europe, and the greatest traveller 
of all the Middle Ages, the merchant Marco Polo, who with 
his father and uncle first reached Cathay itself, abode there 
for eighteen years and finally came back to Europe by sea. 

The first travellers of whom we have record were Franciscan 
friars, sent on diplomatic missions to the Great Khan, the 
one by Pope Innocent IV, the other by King Louis IX of 
France. They came and went, and sojourned only long 
enough to deliver their letters and receive the Great Khan’s 
very haughty reply. But they are particularly interesting, 
because they give a view of the manners and customs of 
the Tartars at an early stage, and are the first Europeans 
to make the land journey across the deserts and mountains 
of Central Asia and the distant Mongolian plain. The first 
to set out was John of Pian de Carpine, an Italian and 
Provincial of the Franciscan Order at Cologne. He started 
in 1245, and went by way of Bohemia, Silesia, and Kiev 
to the Tartar horde on the Volga, and then, with a Polish 
companion, on across Central Asia in the midst of hardships 
so terrible that he afterwards died from their effects. He 


1 One of the best statements of the scheme occurs in Marino Sanuto’s 
Secreta (written 1306-7 and finally revised 1321). The conquest of the 
Turks is to be carried out by the aid of the Tartars, beginning with 
Egypt. He gives a sketch of the history and customs of the Tartars 
and of European intercourse with them up to that date, and mentions 
that many Christian traders have gone to the East by way of the Tartar 
lands. 

2 See C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Mod. Geog. (1906), iii, pp. 309-499. 












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ROUTES TO CATHAY 129 


was received by the Great Khan elect, Kuyuk, at a place 
half a day’s journey from Karakorum in Mongolia, where a 
host of Mongol notables and envoys had gathered for 
the election, and returned with letters from ‘ Kuyuk, the 
strength of God, God in Heaven and Kuyuk Khan on 
earth, the seal of the Lord of all men’, reaching the papal 
court in 1247. Imbued though he was with a profound 
hatred for the Tartars, he was a remarkable observer, who 
has left the best description of Tartar manners and customs 
written in the Middle Ages, and an excellent account of the 
ceremonies at the election of a great khan. 

Meanwhile in 1248-9 a Mongol embassy came to St. Louis 
of France, just when he was in the midst of a crusade at 
Cyprus, from the Tartar general in Persia, offering alliance 
against the Muslims. This stimulated the dispatch of an 
unsuccessful mission under another friar, Andrew of 
Longjumeau, to the same Khan whose election Pian de 
Carpine had seen, but who died before it reached him, and 
it was not until 1251 that there set out the second great 
friar traveller of the Middle Ages, William of Rubruck, 
a native of French Flanders, who carried letters from 
St. Louis to the new Khan. He went by sea to the Crimea 
and on to the Don and the Volga, and then pressed on across 
Central Asia by forced marches which tried him terribly, 
for he was very fat, often so hungry that he was reduced 
to eating the biscuits which he had brought as a delicacy 
for the Tartar nobles, and sometimes so cold that he had to 
turn his sheepskin coat with the wool inside, and his bare 
toes were frost bitten in their sandals. He leaves us a 
very good account (addressed to St. Louis) of the Tartars, 
with their cart-borne tents, their wandering herds, and their 

_drink of kumiss, or fermented mares’ milk, for which he 
conceived a liking, though among the Christians dwelling 
with the Tartars it was held equivalent to a denial of their 
faith to drink it. He gives a particularly graphic description 
of the hordes of the Don and Volga on the move; and also 
of the Court of Mangu Khan near Karakorum. Here he 


1 For Pian de Carpine’s narrative of his journey and an account by 
his companion, Benedict the Pole, see The Journey of William of 
Rubruck ... with two accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian de 
Carpine, ed. W. W. Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900), pp. 1-39. 


K 


130 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


met embassies from many parts and priests of all sorts of 
religions—Catholics, Nestorians, Armenians, Manicheans, 
Buddhists, and Muslims—-all disputing with each other 
and all trying to establish their claims over the soul of the 
Khan, who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things, but 
made use of them as it suited him. * We Moal,’ said Mangu 
to the friar, who spoke with him through an interpreter, 
‘believe that there is only one God, by whom we live and 
by whom we die, and for whom we have an upright heart .. . 
But as God gives us the different fingers of the hand, so 
he gives to men divers ways. God gives you the Scriptures 
and you Christians keep them not. You do not find in them, 
for example, that one should find fault with another, do you ? ’ 
‘No, my lord,’ said William, *‘ but I told you from the first 


that I did not want to wrangle withanyone.’ ‘Ido notintend 
to say it for you,’ he said, ‘ Likewise you do not find that a 
man should depart from justice for money.’ ‘No, my lord,’ 


said William, * And truly I came not to these parts to obtain 
money ; on the contrary I have refused what has been offered 
me’; and a secretary present bore witness that he had refused 
silver and silken cloths. ‘I do not say it for you,’ again 
replied the Khan. ‘God gave you, therefore, the Scriptures 
and you do not keep them. He gave us diviners, we do what 
they tell us and we live in peace.’} If this was a barbarian 
it was a barbarian of insight. 

William’s own description of his difficulties with rival 
Christians, such as the Armenian monk Sergius and the 
Nestorians, somewhat bears out the Great Khan’s palpable 
hit. Of the Nestorians, like all Christian travellers to the 
Kast, he gives a very hostile account, on the principle, not 
unfamiliar among some modern missionaries, that a heathen 
is greatly to be preferred to a rival Christian sectary. His 
story of the monk Sergius (who subsequently turned out 
to be an impostor who had never taken orders at all, but was 
a cloth weaver in his own country) is one of the most amusing 
passages in medieval travel literature. This man was in 
the habit of working miracles upon the persons of the Tartars, 
by giving them draughts of holy water, in which he had placed 
a little cross; previously, however, he took the precaution 


1 Op. cit., pp. 235-6. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 131 


of mixing a good dose of rhubarb with the holy water, the 
effect of which was naturally regarded by the ignorant 
Tartars as a great miracle. William, though shocked, 
bore this without protest, until the monk happened to 
visit one Master William Buchier, of Paris, a skilled goldsmith 
who had been captured in the Hungarian raids and was 
employed in various important works at Karakorum, and 
who was then convalescing from a serious illness. Master 
Buchier consumed two bowls of the concoction, thinking 
it to be holy water, and it nearly killed him. This at last 
moved William to protest. ‘ Either,’ said he to the monk, 
* go as an apostle doing real miracles by the grace of the Word 
and the Holy Ghost, or do as a physician in accordance with 
the medical art. You give to drink to men not in a condition 
for it a strong medicinal potion, as if it were something holy ; 
and in so doing you would incur great shame should it 
become known among men.’! Our good friar had plenty of 
sense, but he lacked the instincts of the medical missionary. 

William of Rubruck set out again for Europe in July, 1254, 
leaving behind a companion, Bartholomew of Cremona, 
to preach to the Tartars, and returned to the Volga and 
then by way of the Caucasus and Armenia to Cyprus. He 
is not only a very valuable writer from a geographical, 
ethnological, and philological point of view (he picked up the 
Mongol tongue and gives a good account of the languages 
with which he met), but also a very entertaining one. Where 
John of Pian de Carpine is impersonally accurate, William’s 
personality emerges clearly from his narrative, which is full 
of conversations and of those small intimate details which 
make a story live. He deserves, indeed, to be more widely 
popular than he is. 

To these two friars belongs the imperishable glory of 
pioneers, for they were the first Europeans to make the land 
journey to Mongolia and return. But the next adventurers 
of whom we know went further and saw and did far more, 
and, by making the return journey by sea, encircled the 
whole of the then known world. They were not friars 
or ambassadors, but belonged to a class which was to provide 
the main impetus to travel in the period which was now 
opening, merchants going upon their own initiative and at 

1 Ibid., pp. 192-3, 216. 


1382 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


their own cost and risk, moved by no motive save love of 
adventure and that auri sacra fames to which in the history 
of mankind it has so often been allied. Marco Polo was 
incomparably the greatest traveller and the most magnificent 
observer of the whole Middle Ages, shining among the others— 
good as they are—like Apollo among the hinds of Admetus. 
The story of the Polos is well known.1 About the same 
time that William of Rubruck was setting forth on his 
journey, two Venetian jewel merchants, Nicolo and Maffeo 
Polo, trading to Constantinople, decided to take ship from 
that city to the Crimea, where they had a counting house at 
Soldaia (the modern Sudak), and to go on a trading expedition 
to the Khan of the Golden Horde on the Volga. They 
soon disposed of their jewels and spent a year at his camp, 
and then war broke out between this Khan and the Ilkhan of 
Persia and cut off their road back. But no Venetian was 
ever at a loss or averse from seeing new lands, and so 
the Polos decided to go on and visit the Khan of Central 
Asia or Chagatai, and perhaps make their way back to 
Constantinople by some unfrequented route. They struggled 
over the great steppes which lie beween the Volga and the 
Aral, and coming by Khiva followed the line of the Oxus down 
to the city of Bokhara, one of the richest and most crowded 
marts of Asia, lying upon the great silk-route. Here they 
remained for three years and learned the Tartar tongue, 
until one day an embassy came to the city on its way back 
from Persia to the Great Khan in China, and the envoys, 
amazed to find Italians in this distant spot, persuaded the 
brothers to accompany them. So for a year the Polos 
journeyed with the Tartar embassy across the heart of Asia, 
until at last they stood in the presence of Kublai Khan himself. 
He gave them the warm welcome which his envoys had 
promised, and listened to all that they had to tell him about 
the West, for they were the first Europeans that he had seen. 
Finally he decided to send them back on a mission to the 
Pope, asking for a hundred men of learning to preach to 


1 The standard English edition of Marco Polo’s book is The Book 
of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels 
of the East, ed. Sir Henry Yule (3rd edit., revised by H. Cordier, Hakluyt 
Soc., 1903, 2 vols.). See also H. Cordier, Sey Marco Polo, Notes and 
Addenda (1920). 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 133 


his Tartars and some oil from the sacred lamp on the Sepulchre 
at Jerusalem. The return journey across central Asia 
was slow and hazardous and took the brothers three years, 
but they reached Acre at last in 1269. 

They set out to go back to the Great Khan in November, 
1271, bearing with them letters from Pope Gregory X and 
the holy oil; but the only men of learning who accompanied 
them were two Dominicans, who deserted in a panic at 
Lajazzo. However, they took with them no mean substitute 
for the hundred men of learning asked for by the Great Khan 
in the person of Nicolo’s son Marco Polo, a lad of seventeen. 
Landing at Lajazzo in the Gulf of Alexandretta, the Polos 
travelled by way of Mosul and Baghdad to Ormuz on the 
Persian Gulf, where they possibly intended to take ship 
and make the long sea journey to one of the Chinese ports. 
They did not, however, do this, but instead turned north 
through the salt desert of Kerman, through Balkh and 
Khorasan and Badakhshan (where they halted for a year 
to allow Marco Polo to recover from an illness), over the 
icy highlands of Pamir, the ‘roof of the world’, where Marco 
saw and noted the long horned mountain sheep, the ovis Poll, 
which now bears his name, though indeed William of 
Rubruck saw and described it before him. They followed 
the old southern caravan route, on which no European 
was ever seen again until the nineteenth century, passing 
through Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan until they reached 
the edge of the Gobi desert. Here they halted to load their 
camels with provisions and then set out on the terrible 
three days’ journey across the desert, beset with nightmare 
fears and the sound of ghostly drums and gongs, tempting 
the unwary traveller from the road at night. At last they 
came safely to Tangut on the extreme north-west of China, 
skirted the frontier across the Mongolian steppes, and reached 
the court of the Great Khan in May, 1275, having journeyed 
for three and a half years. 

The Khan received them with high honour, and instantly 
took the young Marco into his service. It was the beginning 
of a long and close association, for Kublai Khan soon found 
him very intelligent, discreet, and observant, and began to 
employ him on various missions. Everywhere Marco Polo 
went, readily picking up several of the languages current 


1384 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the Great Khan’s dominions, he observed and made notes 
of what he saw, and the Khan was wont to say that alone 
among his envoys this man used his eyes and could bring 
back with him not merely an account of the rendering of his 
mission but a hundred interesting and entertaining details 
about the lands through which he passed and the people 
whom he saw. How much do we not owe to the noble 
curiosity of Kublai Khan, which stimulated Marco Polo 
to see and to enquire, and to make such careful notes 
concerning the marvellous empire which he was the first 
European to see! The extent of his travel was immense. 
He journeyed through the provinces of Shansi, Shensi and 
Szechuan, and even skirted the edge of Tibet to Yunnan 
and penetrated to Northern Burma. He was for three years 
Governor of the Chinese city of Yangchow. He went by sea 
on a mission to Cochin-China and on to India. He describes 
the Great Khan’s capital of Cambaluc, or Peking, in the 
North, and his summer palace at Shandu with its woods 
and gardens, its marble palace and bamboo pavilion, its 
magicians, and its stud of white mares; indeed, he gave 
Shandu immortality in a misty Western island, destined 
one day to rule a sea empire wider even than the land empire 
of Kublai Khan, for it was from his description of it that 
Coleridge drew his dream picture of Xanadu : 


In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

A stately pleasure dome decree, 

Where Alph the sacred river ran 

Past caverns measureless to man 

Down to a sunless sea. 

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills 
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree, 
And here were forests, ancient as the hills, 
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 


He describes also Manzi, or Southern China, with its capital, 
the beautiful Kinsai (Hangchow), which later European 
travellers always described (as indeed he did himself) in 
terms almost of rapture, declaring it to be the greatest, 
richest and loveliest city in the world; Kinsai, which stood 
like Venice upon innumerable canals, with its twelve great 
gates and the twelve thousand bridges which spanned its 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 135 


waterways, its wide streets lined by houses and shops and 
gardens, the stone warehouses of merchants from India 
refiected all along its great canal, and hard by the city 
that Western Lake, which generations of Chinese poets 
have so incomparably sung; Kinsai, with its silk clad 
population of lords and merchants, and its ladies, of whom 
even a Franciscan friar could not refrain from noting that 
they were the most beautiful in the world.1_ Marco Polo 
tells also of Zaiton (Ts‘tienchow), the great port of the province 
and plainly, from the accounts which survive of it, one of the 
greatest ports of the world,? to which there came a hundred 
times more pepper every year than reached the whole of 
Christendom through Alexandria and the harbours of 
the Levant. At Zaiton the big junks laded spices and aloes, 
ebony and sandal wood from Indo-China, together with 
Tibetan musk and the unmatched silks of China, and 
sailed with them to India, there to trade them for pearls 
and precious stones from Ceylon, pepper and ginger and 
muslins ‘ like tissue of spiders’ webs’ from Southern India. 
Marco Polo describes, indeed, the whole of that splendid empire, 
full of wealth and commerce, with its canal and river traffic, 
its system of posts and caravanserais, its paper money, 
and its great ruler Kublai Khan, who was worthy of the 
ancient civilization which he thus inherited. He describes 
also the strange and half barbarous people of Tibet and 
Central Asia, and is the first European to speak of Burma, 
Siam, Java, Sumatra and Ceylon. It is almost impossible 
to speak too highly either of the extent of his observation 
or of its accuracy. It is true that he repeats some of the 
usual travellers’ tales, and that where he reports from 
hearsay he not infrequently makes mistakes; but where 
he had observed with his own eyes he was almost always 
accurate; he had a great opportunity, and he was great 
enough to take it. 

Marco Polo had, indeed, ample time to make these 

1 Oderic of Pordenone. See below, p. 149. 

2 Ibn Battitah said of it later: ‘The harbour of Zaiton is one of the 
greatest in the world—I am wrong, it is the greatest. I have seen 
there about a hundred first class junks together ; as for the small ones, 
they were past counting’ (Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule (1916 ed.), 
iv, p. 118). He had seen Alexandria, Constantinople, and the great ports 


of Southern India ; and Marco Polo and the other Italians knew Venice 
and Genoa, the greatest European trading cities of the Mediterranean. 


136 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


observations, for he remained in China from 1275 to 1292. 
Then the old Khan was very unwillingly persuaded to allow 
the three Polos to return to Europe as escorts of a Tartar 
princess who was being sent as a bride to the Ilkhan of Persia. 
They set sail from Zaiton and spent over two years on the 
journey, but finally reached Persia, handed over the lady, 
and came back by Tabriz, Trebizond, and Constantinople 
to Venice at last in the winter of 1295. 

There is no need to labour the effect of the tremendous 
mass of exact knowledge which the reports of Marco Polo 
brought to the enterprising mercantile world of Venice 
and Genoa, and to the hardly less enterprising ecclesiastical 
world which was still cherishing its great scheme of converting 
the Tartars. The two friars who first penetrated to Mongolia 
and the three merchants who first made the great tour 
to Cathay by land and back to Europe by sea were only 
pioneers of a widespread movement. For it was by now 
plain that the Tartar Empire had wrought one of the most 
startling revolutions in the history of the world up to that 
date by bringing into contact for the first time the two ends 
of the earth, Europe and the Far East. For the next fifty 
years or so, roughly between 1290 and 1340, a steady stream 
of travellers took the Eastern road. They had need, indeed, 
to find new trade routes, for the collapse of the Latin power 
in Palestine, culminating in the loss of Acre in 1291, was 
seriously interrupting the old. The term ‘trade routes’ is 
used advisedly, for although some of the best travel books 
belonging to this period were written by missionaries, the 
real impetus to travel was given by trade, and the most 
frequent journeys to Persia, India and Cathay were made 
by merchants. These merchants now found themselves 
no longer mere clients at the closed gates of the East, loading 
their ships with goods brought to those termini by Muslim 
middlemen ; they found that they could pass through the 
gates and themselves follow the trade routes. Direct 
access to the East was at last open to them, and it has been 
said with truth that ‘ the unification of Asia by the Mongols 
was as important a fact for the commerce of the Middle Ages 
as the discovery of America for the men of the Renaissance. 
It was equivalent to the discovery of Asia.’ } 

1 R. Grousset, Hist. de] ’ Aste (Paris, 1922), iii, p. 130. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 137 


What the Tartars in effect did was to throw open two 
out of the three great trade routes between East and West. 
One, the Egyptian road, remained in the hands of the Muslims 
and closed to Europeans, though the Venetian galleys 
still brought back their cargoes of spices and silk from the 
great terminus port of Alexandria. But the other two, 
the Persian-Syrian and long sea route and the Transasiatic 
land route were in the hands of the Tartars and were now 
thrown open. Marco Polo went by the latter and returned 
by the former. 

Consider first the sea route to India, reached through 
the new Ilkhanate of Persia. During the Tartar period 
Persia resumed her historic role of antechamber to the East, 
which she had not played since the days of Alexander. The 
capital of Tartar Persia, Tabriz, or Tauris, soon outshone 
Baghdad as the chief mart of the district, and was visited 
and admired by all the great travellers of the age. ‘It 
is the best city in the world for merchandise,’ said Oderic 
of Pordenone, ‘and is worth more to the emperor than his 
whole kingdom is to the King of France.’ It had the initial 
advantage that it could be reached by caravan routes from 
two ports which were in Christian hands and thus did not 
incur, like Alexandria, the papal ban against trading with 
the infidel (not that Christian merchants took the ban very 
seriously). One of these ports was Lajazzo or Ayas, on 
the Gulf of Alexandretta in the kingdom of Little Armenia, 
from which Marco Polo started on his outward journey, 
and the other was Trebizond, on the southern shore of the 
Black Sea, the capital of an independent Greek state, from 
which he took ship on his way home. Coming from either 
of these ports to Tabriz, merchants could then follow the 
caravan route down to Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian 
Gulf, which was the chief port for the Indian trade at this 
period, and of which Marco Polo and other travellers have 
left admirable descriptions. 

Very soon this Persian route almost ousted the Egyptian 
route as the vestibule between the Mediterranean and 
the Indian Ocean. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt 
imposed such heavy tolls at Alexandria that Indian 
merchandise increased 800% in price by the time it got to 
Europe; also they were apt to molest the Christian merchants 


188 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and strictly forbade them the interior. But in Persia the 
Ilkhans pursued an enlightened policy, imposing low customs, 
protecting traders, policing the roads, establishing a regular 
system of posts, and allowing free passage everywhere. ‘The 
Europeans were not slow to take advantage of the new 
facilities ; we hear of an Italian merchant in Tabriz as early 
as 1264 (his will, made there in that year, survives and sets 
forth his stock of cloth from Venice, Germany and Flanders, 
pearls and sugar and chessmen from the East, saddles, 
cups, candlesticks and drinking glasses)! At first the trade 
of the district fell mainly to the Genoese, and to this day 
the Turks of Asia Minor are wont to attribute to that 
enterprising people any ancient stone building whose origin 
is unknown.?. Marco Polo found them all powerful at Tabriz 
in 1294 and mentions that a Genoese company was already 
navigating the great inland Caspian Sea. But the Venetians 
began to compete with them early in the fourteenth century, 
and had an advantageous commercial treaty with the 
Ilkhan in 1320 and a Consul in Tabriz in 1824. 

At first, too,Christian missionaries had a considerable success. 
The great Khan Hulagu, who first made himself master of 
Persia, had a Nestorian wife,? and they both treated their 
Christian subjects with a favour which contrasted strongly 
with their severity towards the Muslims, so that the Armenian 
writers celebrate them ‘as a new Constantine and Helena, 
the hope and solace of Christians, the torches and protectors 
of religion.?4 This favour was even more marked under 
Arghun Khan (1284-91), who also had a Nestorian wife, 
and rumours of whose conversion to Christianity were 
constantly coming West. It was the deliberate policy 
of this prince to bring about a general crusade against the 
Mamluks of Egypt by a combination between himself 
and the Latin Powers, and constant embassies passed between 
him and the Pope and other Christian monarchs. In 1287 
the famous Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Uigur from 
Cathay, who had come to Armenia on his way to make a 

1 W. Heyd, Hist. du Commerce du Levant, ed. Furcy Raynaud, 
(2nd ed. Leipzig, 1923), ii, p. 110. His name was Pietro Viglioni. 

Ao Wael: ad Sah eet 

§ Similarly William of Rubruck found that many royal and high- 


born Tartar ladies at Karakorum were Christians. 
* Grousset, op. cit., ili, pp. 102-3. 









































ROUTES TO CATHAY 139 


pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was sent by Arghun on an embassy 
to Europe to rouse its rulers to common action against Islam. 
He visited Constantinople and Rome, delivered to Philip 
the Fair at Paris a letter from Arghun, written in Uigur 
characters, which may still be seen in the Archives Nationales, 
and interviewed Edward I of England in Guyenne. In 
1289 the Ilkhan sent another embassy to Paris and London, 
promising the king of France that he would give him Jerusalem 
when it was taken, and in 1290 yet another envoy came from 
him to the Pope. It is of some interest that among the return 
embassies which were sent to Arghun one went from England 
in 1291, under the leadership of Geoffrey de Langele, and 
the account of its expenses has survived ; moreover, two 
Mongol ambassadors actually presented themselves before 
Edward II at Northampton in 1807, and took back with 
them a letter to the Ilkhan Uljaytu.! It is not surprising, 
in view of these exchanges, that Christian missions flourished 
in Persia, that churches and houses of friars sprang up in 
various parts, and that one of the most interesting mission 
writers of this age (which abounds in them) should be 
Ricold of Monte Croce, the Dominican friar who laboured 
in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Persia from about 1286. 
But the fair hopes of the Christian missions were slain by 
the final conversion of the Ilkhans to Islam in 1816, and though 
a great missionary effort took place between 1318 and 1336, 
and Catholic bishoprics continued to be founded in these 
parts and maintained a wonderful vitality, we hear little 
of them after about 1340.2 

But it was not for the sake of Persia alone that the opening 
of the land route was epoch making. Persia was only the ante- 
chamber ; what was more important was that at Ormuz 
Europeans could now take ship and bear their gospel and 
their trade to India itself. In 1315 agents of the Genoese bank 
of Vivaldi (the same enterprising family which a quarter of 


1 For these diplomatic missions, see Abel-Rémusat, ‘ Memoires sur 
les Relations politiques des Princes chretiens et particuli¢rement les 
Rois de France, avec les Empereurs Mongols’ (Mem. de l’ Acad. Royale 
des Inscriptions et Belles-Letives, T. iv and v, 1821-2). Short accounts 
are given by Grousset, op. cit., iii, pp. 107-9, and by Beazley, op. cit., 1ii, 
PP- 492-3, 539-47. 

2 For Ricold of Monte Croce and the Persian mission, see Beazley, 
op. cit., lili, pp. 187-215. 


140 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


a century before had sailed forth to find the road to India 
down the African coast and disappeared for ever)1 had 
trading stations on the Gujerat and Malabar coasts. 
Kuropean merchants regularly visited the great ports of 
the Gulf of Cambay and of Malabar and Coromandel, 
which were crowded with a mixed population of Christians, 
Hindus, Muslims and Chinese; for, as Heyd points out, 
the great age of the Tartars corresponds with the period 
of greatest activity in the political and commercial relations 
between India and China, and these ports, especially Calicut 
and Quilon, were among the richest in the world. Missionary 
activity was no less active here than in Persia. A Latin 
mission visited the Malabar region under John of Monte 
Corvino in 1291-2, and was indeed there when Marco Polo 
passed on his way home; and we hear of four Franciscans 
who were martyred at Tannah on the Gulf of Cambay in 
1321, in circumstances which made a great impression 
upon contemporaries, for the episode is mentioned by almost 
every mission writer of the time. In 1829 John XXII 
made Quilon a bishopric and sent there as bishop the 
Dominican Jordanus of Séverac, one of the best travel writers 
of this period.2, He was replaced later by John Marignolli, 
on the latter’s return from China in 1348-9. There was a 
Catholic church called St. George of the Latins there, and the 
Latin mission found an indigenous Nestorian population 
of great antiquity, the reputed descendants of St. Thomas’ 
converts, and the shrine of St. Thomas at Quilon was held in 
great veneration. Descriptions of India are given by Marco 
Polo, Jordanus, Oderie of Pordenone and Marignolli. »We 
hear of the fabulous riches, the splendid bazaars, the great 
manufactures of muslin and cottons, the pearl fisheries 
of Ceylon, the pepper gardens and world famous ginger of 
Quilon, and the huge ocean-going ships which crowded the 
harbours. They describe the natural features of the 
country, the tremendous heat, the dark rice-eating population, 
the delicious fruits, jack and mango and coco-nut, the 
palmyra palm, the brilliant parrots, the many elephants and 


1 On this enterprise of Ugolino and Guido Vivaldi and two Franciscan 
friars and on the traditional explorations of Ugolino’s son Sorleone in 
search of them, see Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 413-18. 

2 For Jordanus and the Indian mission, see ibid., iii, pp. 215-35. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 141 


crocodiles. They tell also of the religion of the Hindus, 
with their sacred oxen, their enormous idols, their ascetic 
fakirs, their sacred caste of Brahmans and the practice of 
suttee. Jordanus speaks of a prophecy, handed down among 
the Indians, that the Latin races were destined to conquer 
all the world ; in how dramatic a manner it was to receive 
fulfilment later he could not foresee ; but he declares that the 
King of France could easily, by his own force alone, subdue 
this fair land to Christianity, he deplores the success of the 
Muslim missionaries, who had the effrontery to travel about 
the East for all the world like ourselves (sicut nos),} and 
declares that if the Pope would but send two galleys to the 
Indian seas, and so catch the Sultan of Egypt in a noose, 
marvels might be accomplished. 

Moreover, although all travellers touched at an Indian 
port all did not stay there. For they could now take ship 
on one of the Chinese junks which came to Quilon and Malabar. 
Ibn Battiitah at one time saw thirteen large junks lying ready 
to sail in the port of Malabar, and admirable descriptions 
of them are given by Marco Polo, Oderic, Ibn Battitah and 
Jordanus. They were made of fir and single decked, with 
fifty or sixty cabins and four (sometimes six) masts, double 
planked and furnished with water-tight compartments. 
They used both sails and oars and their crews numbered 
some 800 or 400 men; Ibn Battiitah tells how the sailors had 
pots of herbs and ginger growing aboard, and sang ‘La, 
la! La, la!’ as they pulled the oars. On the junk on which 
Oderic of Pordenone embarked at Quilon there were ‘a good 
700 souls, what with sailors and merchants’. Aboard one 
of these European travellers could sail on past Java and 
Sumatra and Indo-China to Cynkalan (Canton), or Zaiton 
by the route which Marco Polo took on his return journey, 
and many European travellers after 1290 came to China 
by this long sea route. Its disadvantage was that it was very 
slow (it took two years), and it was because the land route 
was much shorter and reputed to be safer that medieval 


1 Professor Beazley notes: ‘ It was at this very time, as a matter of 
history, that Moslem perfida began its permanent conquest of the Malay 
world, began successfully to compass the seas and lands of the 
Archipelago in search of proselytes, began to penetrate even to the 
interior of Java and Sumatra.’ Ibid., iii, p. 234. 


1422 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


opinion preferred the second of the two roads which the 
Tartars opened to the West. 

This was the great caravan route across Central Asia, 
and it may be said with truth that if the Tartar conquest 
of Persia opened the road to India the Tartar conquest 
of Russia opened the road to China.! The great overland 
silk route across Asia is one of the oldest and one of the most 
romantic trade routes in the world and its immense 
importance at this period can hardly be overestimated. 
Travellers could get by it to China in five or six months, 
travelling with the imperial posts, though caravans naturally 
took longer. It could be reached from Trebizond or Lajazzo 
via Tabriz by making the golden journey to Merv, Bokhara 
and Samarcand along a caravan route which joined them ; 2 
but from the beginning of the fourteenth century another 
route became much more important and that was the road 
which went from the Crimea by land or sea to Tana (Azov), 
then across the steppes to Astrakhan or to Sarai on the Volga, 
and by camel across the desert to Urgenje (near Khiva) on the 
Oxus, and so on to the Bokhara-Samareand route, and 
straight across central Asia by one of the three great roads, 
the north Thian Shan (Pe-lu), the south Thian Shan (Nan-lu) 
or the north Kuenlun into China.? 

This road again meant direct access for Europe to the 
Far East. In 1266 the Mongol Khan of Kipchak authorized 
the Genoese to establish a colony at Kaffa on the shores 
of the Crimea, and the Venetians had one at Soldaia. Later 
they were allowed to establish themselves in Tana, too. 
These two towns are immensely interesting and deserve 
each a monograph.* Tana was the great focus for the 
corn and furs and other products of Russia, the silks and 
spices of the Far East and the merchandise of India, coming 
up by the Khyber Pass or through Persia. Kaffa was a 
curious cosmopolitan city, crowded with mosques and 
churches, Tartars and Muslims and Christians, an inveterate 
centre for the slave trade. This Crimean district grew 

1 Grousset, op. cit., iii, p. 137. 

2 There was also a more southern route which went via Kashgar, 
Yarkand, and Khotan, and which Marco Polo followed. 

3 See Beazley, op. cit., ili, p. 462. 


* See an excellent short account of them in Heyd, op. cit., ii, pp. 156- 
215. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 143 


steadily in importance as a great mart for the Eastern trade, 
and here again the Genoese played the most important 
part. They had a special branch of the Government, the 
offictum Gazarie, or Crimean Office, to look after their Black 
Sea trade, and when in 1343 the Kipchak Khan quarrelled 
with the Italians, seized Tana, and laid siege to Kaffa, there 
was a dearth of corn and foodstuffs throughout the Byzantine 
Empire and the price of Eastern silks and spices forthwith 
doubled in Italy, which shows how the overland route 
had by this time outstripped the others in importance. 
Kaffa was to be brought even more disastrously to the 
notice of Europe in 1348, for it was through it that the 
Black Death, which originated in China, reached the West. 
Some say that it broke out among the Tartars who were 
once again besieging Kaffa, and that they threw the infected 
corpses into the town by means of their siege instruments 
in order to achieve a more rapid victory. Others say that 
it broke out among the defenders, the merchants who were 
gathered in the town having brought it with them from 
China rolled up in their bales of silk.1 At all events the 
siege was raised owing to the plague, and it seems certain 
that it was in a Black Sea ship that the Black Death got 
to Italy. 

What direct access from Azov to Peking meant to the 
merchants of the day is best witnessed not so much in the 
journeys of missionary travellers as in the account of the 
overland silk trade left by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, 
an agent of the great Florentine house of Bardi, who about 
1340 wrote an admirable merchants’ handbook concerning 
chiefly the trade of the Levant and the East. He gives full 
information for a merchant starting from Tana and proceeding 
to Peking, returning again with £12,000 worth of silk (reckoned 
in modern money). The stages of the journey, the mode of 
conveyance appropriate to each stage, whether horses, 
camel wagons or pack asses, the time to be allowed for 
each stage, the provisions to be taken, and the estimated 
cost are all set forth, together with a careful comparison 


1 It is noticeable that a number of Chinese silks which still survive 
in medieval church treasuries or in museums in Europe belong to this 
period of the Yuan or Tartar dynasty. See some examples reproduced 
in Chinese Art (Burlington Magazine Monographs, 1925), Textiles, 
Plates 1 and 2. 


144 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of the weights and measures in use in Tana and in Cathay. 
His general instructions are full of interest. ‘‘ In the first 
place you must let your beard grow long and not shave. 
And at Tana you should furnish yourself with a dragoman, 
and you must not try to save money in the matter of dragomen 
by taking a bad one instead of a good one, for the additional 
wages of the good one will not cost you so much as you will 
save by having him. And besides the dragoman it will be 
well to take at least two good men servants who are 
acquainted with the Cumanian tongue, and if the merchant 
likes to take a woman with him from Tana he can do so; 
if he does not like to take one there is no obligation, only 
if he does take one he will be kept much more comfortably 
than if he does not... The road you travel from 
Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or by 
night, according to what the merchants say who have used 
it... You may reckon that from Tana to Sarai the 
road is less safe than on any other part of the journey, and 
yet even when this part of the road is at its worst, if you are 
some sixty men in the company, you will go as safely as 
if you were in your own house. Anyone from Genoa or 
from Venice wishing to go to the places above named and 
to make the journey to Cathay should carry linens with him 
and if he visit Organci (Urgenje) he will dispose of these 
well. In Organci he should purchase somni! of silver and 
with these he should proceed ... Whatever silver the 
merchants carry with them as far as Cathay the lord 
of Cathay will take from them and put in his treasury, 
and to merchants who thus bring silver they give that paper 
money of theirs in exchange. This is of yellow paper, 
stamped with the seal of the lord aforesaid, and this money 
is called balisht and with this money you can readily buy 
silk and all other merchandise that you have a desire to 
buy, and all the people of the country are bound to receive 
it, and yet you shall not pay a higher price for your goods 
because your money is of paper. And of the said paper 
money there are three kinds, one being worth more than 
another, according to the value which has been established 


1 The somno was a silver ingot weighing 8} Genoese Ib., the Genoese 
lb. being equal to about # of the London lb. ; it was reckoned as worth 
five golden florins. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 145 


for each by that lord.1. And you may reckon that you 
can buy for one somno of silver 19 or 20 lb. of Cathay 
suk. You may reckon also that in Cathay you should get 
3 or 34 pieces of damask silk for a somno and from 34 to 5 
pieces of nachettt of silk and gold likewise for a somno of 
silver.”’ * 

There can be no more striking commentary on the effect 
of the Tartar conquests than that casual remark, dropped 
by Pegolotti in passing, that ‘the road you travel from 
Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or night, 
according to what merchants say who have used it.’ Traders, 
indeed, seem to have used it regularly, and so did some of the 
friar travellers of the fourteenth century. There were 
mission stations all along the route, at Kaffa and Tana, 
at Bolgar, at Sarai, at Astrakhan, at Urgenje, at 
Almalik (Kulja). ‘Even more than in China or Persia,’ 
says Professor Beazley, ‘these Latin outposts from the 
Kuxine to Kazan, from the Caucasus to Kulja, represent 
the exploring spirit of the Roman Church in its highest 
form. For where could the enmity of Nature and Man 
be defied more recklessly ? Where in all the known world 
could distance, barbarism, sterility and fanaticism present 
a more formidable combination of obstacles?’® The 
flourishing Christian mission at Almalik was the seat of a 
Franciscan bishop, Richard of Burgundy, and it was here 
that there laboured Friar Pascal of Vittoria, whose admirable 
letter upon his travels, written in 1388, has fortunately 
survived. The advent of a Muslim khan caused his massacre 
and that of the whole mission, which included the Bishop, 
Pascal, two other Franciscan priests, two Franciscan lay 
brethren, a ‘black’ interpreter named ‘John of India’, 
and a Genoese trader, who was in Almalik at the time. 
This was in 1339, and although the church at Almalik was 
rebuilt again by Marignolli in 1340, and the Latin mission 
maintained a precarious existence until 1362, it is clear that 
Pegolotti, had he but known it, when he described the road 

1 Paper money first began to be used in China as early as 
¢. A.D. 806-21. 

2 See extracts from Pegolotti’s Della Pratica della Mercatura in 
Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule (Hakluyt Soc., 2nd ed., 1914), 


lili, pp. 137-73 passim. 
3 Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 238-9. 


1446 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


as sichurissimo, was speaking of an age which was already 
passing away. 

These, then, were the different routes by which European 
travellers found their way to the Far East at the beginning 
of the fourteenth century. It remains to consider some 
of the most distinguished of those who went.2 The most 
numerous travellers were undoubtedly the merchants, but 
although they have left traces of their activity in such 
practical forms as Pegolotti’s handbook and a lexicon of 
Latin, Persian and Cuman, compiled in 1303 by an anonymous 
merchant of Northern Italy,? and although they are, from 
time to time, mentioned incidentally in the narratives 
of other travellers, these traders have for the most part 
left no written account of their adventures. Marco Polo’s 
is the one great travel book written by a merchant in this 
period, and (with the exception of the extremely amusing 
book of the Moor Ibn Battiitah) our accounts of the East 
occur in the letters, reports and books of Christian 
missionaries, and above all of the intrepid and indefatigable 
friars of St. Francis. Truly might Ricold of Montecroce 
remark, ‘’Tis worthy of the grateful remembrance of all 
Christian people that just at the time when God sent forth 
into the Eastern parts of the world the Tartars to slay and 
to be slain, He also sent forth into the West His faithful and 
blessed servants Dominic and Francis, to enlighten, instruct 
and build up the Faith.’ 5 

Of these friars one of the most intrepid and attractive 
is John of Monte Corvino, first papal legate to, and afterwards 
Archbishop of, Peking, who, when nearly fifty years of age, 
set out to take the gospel into India and China, the first 
Latin Christian to leave us a picture of India and St. Thomas’ 
shrine, where he spent a year, and the true founder of the 


1 On Pascal of Vittoria and the Central Asian Mission see Beazley, 
op. cit., ili, pp. 235-50. There was also a Dominican Bishop of 
Samarcand in 1330. 

2 The most important accounts of Cathay by European travellers 
during this period are collected and translated in Cathay and the Way 
Thither, ed. Sir Henry Yule (2nd ed. revised by H. Cordier, Hakluyt 
Soc., 1913-16), 4 vols. 

3 See Beazley, op. cit., iii, p. 480, and Heyd, op. cit., ii, p. 242. 

* For a list of such references see Yule’s introduction to Cathay and 
the Way Thither, i, pp. 170-1. 

5 Quoted by Yule, ibid., i, p. 155. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 147 


Latin Church in China. Of his labours in Cathay we know 
from two letters, written in 1305 and 1306 respectively, 
which he sent home by some of the many Tartar envoys, 
who were continually passing to and fro between the Great 
Khan in Cathay and the Ilkhan of Persia; and his second 
letter is addressed to the friars of the Persian mission. In 
the first he describes how he had laboured alone in Cathay 
for eleven years, until two years previously a German friar 
from Cologne had joined him ; how he had failed to convert 
the Great Khan himself, but had won over a great Nestorian 
prince named George, of whose son he was godfather, and 
who had built him a new church twenty days’ journey from 
Peking. He himself had built in Peking a church with a bell 
tower and three bells; moreover, he had bought 150 pagan 
boys, between seven and eleven years of age, had baptised them 
and taught them Greek and Latin, and had trained a number 
of them as a choir, so that the Great Khan himself delighted 
to hear them chanting. He had translated the New 
Testament and the Psalter into the language and character 
most generally used among the Tartars. He begs for news 
of home, for service books and above all for comrades to 
be sent to help him by the land road across Asia, where 
they could travel with the imperial letter carriers. ‘I 
myself am grown old and grey, more with toil and trouble 
than with years, for I am not more than 58.’ 

The next year he sent another letter to the Persian friars, 
reporting the progress of his new church. The land had 
been bought for him by Master Peter of Lucolongo, ‘a 
faithful Christian man and a great merchant,’ who had joined 
him in Tabriz at the very beginning of his journey and had 
dwelt with him all these years in India and Peking ; a mute 
inglorious Marco Polo, whose own story we would fain 
have heard. The site was but the width of the street from 
the Khan’s own palace, and on it had already sprung up a 
chapel and courts, offices and houses, ‘and I tell you,’ says 
the good friar, ‘ it is thought a perfect marvel by all the people 
who came from the city and elsewhere ... and when 
they see our new building and the red cross planted aloft, 
and us in our chapel with all decorum chanting the service, 
they wonder more than ever. When we are singing, his 
Majesty the Cham can hear our voices in his chamber, 


148 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and this wonderful fact is spread far and wide among the 
heathen ... And I have a place in the Cham’s court 
and a regular entrance and seat assigned me as legate of 
our lord the Pope, and the Cham honours me above all other 
prelates, whatever be their titles. And although his Majesty 
the Cham has heard much of the Court of Rome and the 
state of the Latin world, he desires greatly to see envoys 
arriving from that region.’ } 

This letter also reached the West safely and came to the 
knowledge of the Pope, who in 1307 created Monte Corvino 
Archbishop of Cambaluc and sent out to him three suffragans, 
followed by three more in 1312, all of them Franciscans 
from Italy. The first three became successively bishops of 
Zaiton, and one of them, Andrew of Perugia, wrote a letter 
in 1826 to his mother-house, which gives an interesting 
picture of the Latin Church in that city. A fine cathedral 
had been built there by a rich Armenian lady, and Andrew 
himself had built a handsome church and convent in a grove 
outside the city, with a fine lodging ‘fit for any prelate’. 
“I know none among all the convents of our province,’ 
he says, ‘to be compared with it in elegance and other 
amenities.” He was supported by an imperial dole, the 
value of which amounted to 100 golden florins a year, 
‘according to the estimate of the Genoese merchants’ (an 
interesting reference).? 

But two years before he wrote the letter in which he 
records these things there arrived in China a far more 
important traveller from our point of view, to wit, Friar 
Oderic of Pordenone, who has left us what is perhaps the 
second best travel book of the period, second only to Marco 
Polo, and superior to Marco Polo in its personal note. Oderic 
went by the long sea route from Ormuz to Canton, stopping 
en route in India, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. 
From Canton he went by land to Zaiton and on to Kinsai, 
Jamzai (Yangchow) and Menzu (Ningpo), and by the Grand 
Canal to Cambaluc, his companion during a part of his 
journey being an Irish friar named James. He spent three 
years in Cambaluc and returned home bya land route, which 
apparently included a visit to Tibet and Lhassa, of which 


* For his letter see Cathay and the Way Thither, iii, pp. 45-58. 
2 See ibid., pp. 71-5. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 149 


he gives a vague but interesting account. He describes 
Canton, ‘a city as big as three Venices and all Italy has not 
the amount of craft that this one city hath,’ and speaks also 
of the immense number of junks in the other cities of Southern 
China, adding * indeed it is something hard to believe when 
you hear of, or even see, the vast scale of the shipping in these 
parts’. Of this ‘noble province of Manzi’ he says, ‘I made 
diligent inquiry from Christians, Saracens, idolaters and from 
all the Great Khan’s officers, and they all told me, with 
one consent, as it were, that the province of Manzi hath 
2,000 great cities, cities, mean, of such magnitude that neither 
Treviso nor Vicenza would be entitled to be numbered 
among them. Indeed in that country the number of people 
is so great that among us here it would be deemed incredible ; 
and in many parts I have seen the population more dense 
than the crowds you see at Venice on Ascension day. And 
the land hath great store of bread, of wine, of rice, of flesh 
and of fish of sorts, and of all manner of victuals whatever 
that are used by mankind. And all the people of this 
country are traders and artificers, and no man ever seeketh 
alms, however poor he be, as long as he can do anything 
with his own hands to help himself ; but those who are fallen 
into indigence and infirmity are well looked after and 
provided with necessities. The men, as to their bodily 
aspect, are comely enough, but colourless, having beards 
of long straggling hairs like mousers (cats, I mean). And 
as for the women, they are the most beautiful in the world.’ 
He describes Zaiton, a city ‘ twice as great as Bologna’ ; 
and the two houses of Franciscan friars there, and also the 
beautiful Kinsai, of which he says: ‘If anyone should desire 
to tell of all the vastness and great marvels of this city, 
a good quire of stationery (bonus quaternus stationis) would 
not hold the matter, I trow, for ’tis the greatest and noblest 
city and the finest for merchandise that the world 
containeth.’! He gives a delightful picture also of Cambaluc 


1 In Ramusio’s edition (1583) his account includes the interesting 
phrase: ‘’Tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great, indeed, 
that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice 
people in plenty who have been there.’ It is not improbable that Oderic 
should have met Venetian merchants who had visited Kinsai, but it is 
impossible to say whether Ramusio invented the phrase or took it from 
a lost early MS. 


150 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and the Great Khan’s court there, and he materially 
contributes to our knowledge in several directions by noting 
things left unnoticed by Marco Polo, for instance the Chinese 
custom of binding the feet of their women, the wearing of 
long finger-nails by the men, and the practice of fishing 
with cormorants. It is plain enough that he left his heart 
behind him in China, for he ends his book with the words, 
* As for me, from day to day I prepare myself to return to 
those countries, in which I am content to die, if it pleaseth 
Him from whom all good things do come.’ But this good 
thing was not to come to him and he died in Italy. 

His tales were written down by a brother friar (‘ just as 
he told his story, so friar William wrote it’), and they are 
followed by a testimony to the accuracy of the transcript 
by a third friar, who adds such a charming anecdote that it 
is impossible to refrain from quoting it, more especially 
as it possibly gives us our last picture of the saintly Archbishop 
John of Monte Corvino:1 ‘J, friar Marchesino of Bassano 
of the Order of Minorites, desire to say that I heard the 
preceding relation from the aforesaid Friar Oderic when he 
was still living ; and I heard a good deal more, which he has 
not set down. Among other stories which he told, this was 
one. He related that once upon a time, when the Great 
Khan was on his journey from Sandu to Cambalech, he with 
four other Minor friars was sitting under the shade of a tree 
by the side of the road, along which the Khan was about to 
pass, and one of the brethren was a bishop. So when the 
Khan began to draw near, the bishop put on his episcopal 
robes and took a cross and fastened it to the end of a staff, 
so as to raise it aloft; and then those four began to chant 
with a loud voice the hymn ‘ Veni Creator Spiritus!’ And 
then the Great Khan, hearing the sound thereof, asked what 
it meant, and those four barons who go beside him replied 
that it was four of the Frank Rabbans. So the Khan 
called them to him and the Bishop thereupon, taking the 
cross from the staff, presented it to the Khan to kiss. Now, 
at the time he was lying down, but as soon as he saw the 
cross he sat up, and doffing the cap that he wore, kissed the 
cross in most reverent and humble manner. Now, the rule 


+ But the Bishop referred to may be Andrew of Perugia or one of the 
other friars who became Bishop of Zaiton. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 151 


and custom of that court is that no one shall venture to come 
into the Khan’s presence empty-handed; so Friar Oderic, 
having with him a small dish full of apples, presented that as 
their offering to the Great Khan, and he took two of the apples 
and ate a piece of one of them, whilst he kept the other in 
his hand, and so he went his way. Now, it is clear enough 
from this that the Khan himself had some savour of the 
Catholic faith, as he well might, through the Minor friars 
who dwelt at his court continually. And as for the cap 
which he doffed so reverently before the cross, I have heard 
Friar Oderic say that it was a mass of pearl and gems and was 
worth more than the whole march of Treviso.’ + 

Europe was not to have much further news of Cathay. 
In 1328 John of Monte Corvino died, and ten years later 
an embassy from the Great Khan and from a group of 
Christian Alan princes appeared at the papal court, asking 
for the appointment of a new legate. It was accompanied 
by one Andrew the Frank, who is possibly the Andrew of 
Perugia, whom we met as Bishop of Zaiton. In reply 
an important papal embassy was sent out in charge of 
John Marignolli, an aristrocratic Franciscan of Florence, 
who has left us the last European account of the Far East 
at this period, inappropriately embedded in a history of 
Bohemia, which he wrote after his return. He took the 
overland route and spent four years in China, returning 
by sea from Zaiton and spending some time in Southern 
India on the way. He found the Tartars and. Alans 
venerating the dead Archbishop as a saint in Peking and the 
Latin mission flourishing exceedingly. At Zaiton, too, 
he describes the three great churches of the Franciscans, 
and adds the interesting information that they had founded 
there a fondaco and bath house for the use of European 
merchants, an amazing testimony to the frequency with which 
Western traders (mainly no doubt Genoese) visited the great 
Chinese port.2 After his departure no more is heard of the 
Latin mission; the Pope appointed Archbishops to it from 
time to time in later years, but, so far as the active cure 
of souls was concerned, to be made Archbishop of Peking 


1 For these passages and the rest of Oderic’s account, see Cathay 
and the Way Thither (1913 ed.), vol. 11, passim. 
2 See ibid., ili, pp. 209-69. 


152 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


must have been analagous to applying for the Chiltern 
Hundreds, since it was no longer possible for the Archbishop 
to reach his See. 

There are surely few episodes in history more remarkable 
and more interesting than these years, when an Italian 
archbishop held sway in Peking, when Genoese merchants 
had a fondaco at Zaiton and chaffered in the ports of India, 
when Franciscan friars set up convents in the towns of 
Persia and China, and mission stations in Turkestan, and 
when merchants and missionaries regularly took the caravan 
roads across Central Asia, or sailed in junks through 
the Indian Ocean and among the Spice Islands. 

It was indeed remarkable, but the reason that it is remarked 
less than it would seem to deserve lies in the fact that it was 
strictly an episode. For the gallant missions and the direct 
trade came to an end by the middle of the fourteenth century, 
and the great black curtain rolled down again, cutting all 
Europe from Asia and confining Europeans once again to the 
termini of the trade routes. In the battle of Islam and the 
Cross for the soul of Tartary it was Islam which won, as 
Islam to this day so often wins in dealing with less civilized 
peoples. Gradually the whole of Kipchak and Central Asia 
became converted, and shut off the land route which had 
been so sichurissimo in Pegolotti’s day. So, too, the Ilkhans 
of Persia (having tried in vain for half a century to galvanize 
Europe into doing something more than talk about a common 
crusade against the Mamluks) finally embraced Islam in 
1316, and though they at first retained their old Mongol 
tolerance, the Persian vestibule was all but closed again by 
the middle of the fourteenth century, and the Tartar dynasty 
itself fell before the end.1 Finally, in 1868-70, a revolution 
drove out the Tartar dynasty in China and replaced it by 
a native dynasty, the Mings, who resumed the indigenous 
anti-foreign policy of the Chinese, so that even had Europeans 
been able to get to Peking and the port towns, they would not 


* It should be observed, however, that occasional Europeans con- 
tinued to reach India by this route during the fifteenth century. 
Towards 1440 the Venetian Nicolo Conti visited Malabar and may even 
have gone to China, of which he gives several accurate particulars, 
and in 1483 another Venetian and a Milanese crossed Persia and sailed 
from Ormuz to Cambay. Grousset, op. cit., iii, p. 137. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 153 


have been received there. The conquests of Timur completed 
a process already almost complete before he came. 

That great conqueror might, indeed, had he lived to complete 
his project of subduing China, have re-established something 
analagous to the empire of Kublai Khan, though it would have 
been an ardently Muslim empire and thus probably unfriendly 
to direct access by Christian merchants to the East. But 
he pillaged Baghdad and Shiraz and in his campaigns, to 
render safe his own Trans-Oxianian realm and to make 
Samarcand the greatest trading centre of the East, he ravaged 
the country to the North and destroyed Tana, Sarai, 
Astrakhan, Urgenje and Almalik, and fatally interrupted the 
caravan route on which they were stages, while his death 
threw Higher Asia into an anarchy which still further cut 
off West from East. Two European travellers have, indeed, 
left us accounts of Eastern journeys in the time of Timur. 
One, the Spaniard Clavijo, was sent on a mission to the 
conqueror’s court by Henry of Castile in 1403, and travelled 
by way of Trebizond, Tabriz, Sultaniyah (a splendid mart, 
to which he notes that the traders of the West, ‘aye, of Venice 
and of Genoa,’ were still able to make their way from Kaffa, 
Trebizond or Syria), Nishapur, Meshed and the Oxus to 
Samarcand. He has left an extraordinarily vivid picture of 
Timur and his court and of the prosperity of Samarcand, and 
from a camel driver, who had come with the Peking caravan 
of 800 camels to the city, he learned something of Cathay. 
The other traveller of this age is Schiltberger, a German 
taken captive and enslaved first by the Ottoman Sultan 
Bajazet, then by Bajazet’s conqueror Timur, and then by 
other Tartar princes, whose Reisebuch recounts his enforced 
wanderings (1396-1425) in the lands of the Levant and Black 
Sea and Trans-Oxiana, leaving among other things a very 
good picture of Kaffa, and having a peculiar interest of its 
own because, alone among the medieval travel books, it is 
the work of an under-dog, a poor slave who picked up his 
knowledge from under-dogs like himself.+ 

But Clavijo and Schiltberger are truly, as Professor Beazley 
calls them, anachronisms. They are writing the sad 
epilogue to a splendid age of travel which has passed away ; 


1 For Clavijo and Schiltberger see Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 332-81. 
The works of both have been published by the Hakluyt Society. 


154 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


China and India were hid from them; they penetrated no 
further than Samarcand along the once open trade route 
and must pick up from camel drivers and the dregs of Timur’s 
camp their knowledge of the great worlds which lay beyond. 
After Timur’s death fanaticism ruled in Persia, anarchy in 
Central Asia, an anti-foreign dynasty in China. So the East 
was hidden once more from European eyes, and the teeming 
peoples, the crowding junks, the rich civilization, were no 
more than a legend to incite the adventurers of a later age, 
when they sought the road to India and Cathay again. 
For the closing of the routes and the triumph of the Turks 
threw Europeans into an increasing dependence upon the 
Egyptian road and the terminus at Alexandria, beyond 
which they might never pass. Useless now to dream of taking 
the road for Ormuz at Lajazzo or Trebizond; useless to 
gather dragomen and set out from Kaffa or Tana. If they 
would reach the lands of which Marco Polo wrote, they must 
seek a new road, not by the East but by the West, not by 
land but by sea. The failure of the great Tartar epic is 
intimately connected with the epics of Vasco da Gama and 
Columbus. 

But looking back upon this episode, so marvellous, even 
if it was so brief, does it not bear witness to the injustice of 
many commonly received historical judgments? History 
gives to the fifteenth century the name of the ‘Age of 
Discovery ’, because its discoveries were never lost. But 
are Vasco da Gama and Columbus himself more remarkable 
than Marco Polo, or than those half forgotten friars and wholly 
forgotten merchants, who took the land and sea roads to 
India and Cathay in the century between 1245 and 13845 ? 
History, again, commonly represents the Tartars as mere 
barbarians, unintelligent and savage ravagers like the Huns, 
seeking to tear down the painfully reared civilization of Islam 
and the West, and the man in the street has gone even further 
than history ; the phrase ‘to catch a Tartar’ has become 
proverbial. 

The truth is that popular opinion persists in remembering 
only the early onslaughts of the Tartars, the first period of 
destruction under the four Great Khans, Chinghiz, Ogotay, 
Kuyuk and Mangu (1206-57), and erects into an historical 
verdict the objurgations of Muslim or Christian writers like 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 155 


Ibnu’l-Athir and Matthew Paris, writing under the stress 
of the first invasions, and often enough writing from hearsay. 
The honest Matthew never saw a Tartar in his life, nor was 
Ibnu’l-Athir a witness of the horrors which he so vividly 
describes. It is true that the early invasions were orgies of 
the most barbarous slaughter, but is it fair to pass judgment 
on the Tartars on the witness of these alone? After all what 
were the Europeans of the day but descendants of those 
Germanic barbarians, whose first invasions were described, and 
deserved to be described, in precisely the same terms by the 
Roman provincials upon whom they fell? No conquering 
people can fairly be condemned on the period of its conquests 
and by the mouths of the conquered. It is inthe subsequent 
period of settled government that it proves its true greatness 
or baseness, and few imperial nations of to-day would care 
for any other criterion. The Tartars deserve to be judged, 
not in their nomad state and in the first age of the invasions, 
but as they were when settled in their four great Khanates. 
They deserve to be judged as a people so tolerant that they 
welcomed the representatives of all religions, Christian friar, 
Buddhist lama, Jewish rabbi, Muslim doctor and Mongol 
medicine-man, equally at their courts, and were regarded by 
Christians not as ‘ the worst enemies of human civilization ’ 
but as potential allies against Islam. The fact that the 
alliance did not éventuate was due not to the Tartars but 
to the internecine bickering of Christian Popes and monarchs. 
They deserve to be judged as the one political power under 
whom the Armenians, always from that day to this persecuted 
by the Turks and never from that day to this helped by the 
Christians, enjoyed a momentary tranquillity, a respite in 
the long crucifixion of their history. They deserve to be 
judged as the power whose policy towards commercial 
intercourse between nations was so enlightened that they 
welcomed traders, lowered dues and-protected caravans and 
roads throughout their dominions, maintaining free inter- 
course over the length and breadth of Asia, so that Professor 

1 Matthew Paris’ famous account of the Tartars in the Chronicle, 
under the year 1240, may be found conveniently translated in 
Matihew Paris’ English History, trans. J. A. Giles (Bohn’s Antiq. 
Lib., 1852), i, pp. 312-14. Ibnu’l-Athir’s account, under the years 
1220-1 and 1230-1 is translated in E. G. Browne, A Literary History 
of Persia (1906), li, pp. 427-31. 


156 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Beazley can with justice call this period ‘ the age of the nomad 
peace’ and Sir Henry Howorth, speaking of this marvellous 
bringing together of the peoples of West and East can write 
‘I have no doubt myself... that the art of printing, 
the mariner’s compass, firearms and a great many details of 
social life, were not discovered in Europe, but imported by 
means of Mongol influence from the furthest East’. 

Indeed, the question whether the Tartars were, or were not, 
the mere enemies of civilization is most properly answered 
by the consideration of what befel the old civilizations of 
Persia and China after the establishment of their rule, and it is 
a remarkable fact that, once the destruction of the first age 
of conquest was over, both countries were able not only to 
preserve their characteristic civilizations but to create new 
wisdom and beauty under Tartar domination. The great 
scholar and lover of Islam, Professor Browne, describes the 
Mongol invasion as ‘one of the most dreadful calamities 
which ever befel the human race’!; but he has to devote a 
whole volume to Persian literature alone under Tartar 
dominion, and his final judgment is that, allowing for the 
sufferings of Persia during the invasions, ‘the period of 
Mongol ascendency (1265-1337) . . . was wonderfully rich 
in literary achievements.’ Nor is it after all so wonderful, 
for the Ilkhans encouraged the study of the natural sciences 
and of history and were by no means indifferent to poetry. 
‘Even Hulagu Khan, the destroyer of Baghdad and deadly 
foe of Islam,’ says Professor Browne ‘ was the patron of two 
of the greatest Persian writers of this period, the astronomer 
Nasiru’d-Din of Tus and the historian ‘Ata Malik of Juwayn, 
author of the ‘‘ History of the Conqueror of the World ”’ i.e. 
Chingiz Khan. Two other historians, ‘Abdu’llah b. Fadlu 
lah of Shiraz, better known as Wassaf-i-Hadrat and the Wazir 
Rashidu’d-Din Fadlu’llah, both of whom flourished in the 
reign of Ghazan Khan (1295-1804) must certainly be ranked 
among the greatest of those who have written in the Persian 
language on this important branch of knowledge. Persian 
literature, indeed, in the narrower sense, can hardly be said 
to have suffered permanently from the Mongol invasion, 


1 E. G. Browne, Hist. of Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion, 
1265-1502 (Cambridge, 1920), p. 4. 
2 Ibid., p. 17. 


ROUTES TO CATHAY 157 


since three of the greatest and most famous poets of 
Persia, Sa‘di of Shiraz, Faridu’d-Din ‘Attar, and Jalalu’d-Din 
Rumi were contemporary with it, and many other most 
famous poets were subsequent to it’.1 Moreover, not only 
literature but also art and architecture flourished under the 
Tartars. It was during their period that the first illustrated 
books appeared in Persia, and the influence of the close 
relations which existed between China and Persia under their 
rule is shown in the blue and shining tiles of the Persian 
mosques of this period, and the carpets in which clouds and 
golden pheasants and dragons of China are mingled with 
purely Persian designs.2 Similarly under the Tartar or 
Ytian dynasty in China, literature and the arts flourished 
with a brilliance worthy of the great Chinese dynasties which 
had gone before. In literature the novel and the drama both 
date from this period, and in art a galaxy of famous painters, 
among whom the most eminent was Chao Meng-fu, adorned 
the age, many of them rising to high office under the Ytian 
emperors.? Moreover, just as Chinese influences appear in the 
Persian art of the period, Persian influences are manifest in 
Yiian potteries, which are justly prized for their beauty, and 
the art of enamelling was introduced into China by Persians. 
But the adaptability which the Tartars showed to the older 
and more advanced civilizations which fell under their sway 
is perhaps most remarkably manifested in the rulers whom 
they produced. Who is not conscious of ‘that humane 
great monarch’s golden look’ which seems to shed a glow 
over Marco Polo’s page? Kublai Khan was a king 
worthy to rank among the wisest of his age, not merely a 
great conqueror but a great ruler. In Persia the Tartars, 
but three generations after the conquest, produced the great 
Ilkhan Ghazan, reformer of administration and_ justice, 


1 E.G. Browne, Literary History of Persia (1906), li, p. 443. He adds, 
however, that the destruction of Baghdad as the metropolis of Islam 
struck a fatal blow at the semblance of unity among the Muhammadan 
nations and also at the prestige and status in Persia of the Arabic 
language. 

2 See some suggestive remarks on this subject in Grousset, op. cit., 
ili, pp. 146-52. 

’ Among others were Li K‘an, Kao K‘o-kung, Huang Kung-wang, 
Wang Méng, Ni Tsan, Wu Chén and Yen Hui. See Giles, Inirod. to 
the Hist. of Chinese Pictorial Avi (2nd. ed., Shanghai, 1918), ch. vi, 
passim. 


158 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


protector of the peasantry, promoter of science, learning, and 
architecture, who made Rashidu’d-Din his chief minister, 
received envoys from China, India, Egypt, Spain, England, 
and many other nations at his court, and was mourned 
throughout Persia when he died. To crown all, the Tartars 
had a share in producing one of the greatest lines of 
monarchs who have ruled in the world’s history, the Great 
Mughals of India, for Baber’s mother was a Tartar princess, 
the last descendant of the Chagatai Khans, and his father, 
the King of Ferghana, was descended from the third son of 
Timur. If we would seek a European parallel to the 
Tartars, both in their early barbarity and in their subsequent 
power of adapting themselves to higher civilizations, it is 
perhaps to be found in the Northmen, against whom men 
prayed, when first they appeared as Viking raiders, * From 
the fury of the Northmen good Lord deliver us!’ and who 
subsequently, as Normans, built up great civilizations in 
Normandy, England and Sicily. But the Normans were more 
fortunate ; they were not an episode; they survived, and in 
history nothing succeeds like success. 

The century 1245 to 1345 was indeed an heroic age in the 
history of travel and an epoch in the relations of East and 
West. But while we give our wonder and admiration to 
William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, John of Monte Corvino 
and the other travellers who first made Asia known to 
Kurope in this brief and marvellous episode, let us not forget 
that it was solely and entirely due to the Tartars that they 
were able to do so, and let us modify in our own minds, if 
not indeed reverse, the unjust verdict by which history has 
too often ungratefully condemned them. For if the world 
had not caught a Tartar in the thirteenth century, it would 
have been the poorer for a legacy of imperishable courage 
and romance. 


CHAPTER VIII 


i. ‘* TRAVELLERS’ TALES OF WONDER AND 
IMAGINATION ”’ 


li. EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN THE 
MiIpDLE AGES 


By Professor ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON 


ANE one surveys the world of the earlier middle ages, one 

cannot fail to note the comparatively narrow area that 
was clear and familiar to Latin Christendom and how it was 
hemmed in on all sides by the mists of the unknown. Its 
western shores were bounded by the dangers of the 
unnavigable ocean, the north was closed with ice and the 
regions of perpetual darkness, to the east there lay the vast 
spaces of the steppes, dreaded as the lands whence again and 
again for 1,000 years there had surged forth devastating 
hordes of Scyths and Alans, Huns and Tartars to sweep down 
upon the peoples of Christendom with fire and sword. Only 
southward could men look out upon dangers that they under- 
stood from the lands of the infidel, but even there only the 
fringe of the Muslim lands was seen clearly, and beyond them 
again the haze closed down once more upon the torrid sands 
of the unknown desert. Civilized men seemed to live in the 
one bright spot in a shrouded world and, lacking knowledge, 
they imagined around them wonders of all kinds. 

Our concern in these pages is mainly with the authentic 
travels of the time, but these cannot appear in their true 
setting unless we say something also of the marvels that 
abound in the ‘“ travellers’ tales’? of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries and that had a compelling influence 
upon the explorers of the Great Age. In an earlier chapter 
reference was made to the Travels of *‘ Sir John de Mandeville ”’ 


160 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


as illustrating the general equipment of geographical ideas 
of the late fourteenth century, but the extracts there given 
were so reasonable in character as to fail to do justice to the 
extraordinary character of the work. Though achieving great 
popularity in its own day and long accepted as an authentic 
and valuable record of travel, we now know that it was a 
spurious compilation of a citizen of Liege, one Jehan 
d’Outremuse, fathered upon a fictitious English knight 
“‘ Sire Jehan de Mandeville’? much as Swift invented the 
imaginary Lemuel Gulliver to convey his satires. The 
stories with which the book is filled were culled from every 
kind of source from the authentic narratives of Friar Oderic of 
Pordenone or John de Piano Carpine to the ancient fables of 
Pliny and Solinus collected from the encyclopedic works of 
Vincent of Beauvais. The result is hopelessly inconsistent 
with any clear system of geography, but it peopled the mists 
surrounding Christendom with astonishing wonders such as 
the average reader in any age loves, and there were no means 
available for the disentangling of the true wonders from the 
false. Both made an equal appeal and had an equal aspect 
of reality. 

Let us compare for example the accounts of some real and 
some unreal beasts. ‘“* In the isle of Taprobane be great hills 
of gold that pissemyres |[i.e. ants] keep full diligently, and 
they fine the pured gold and cast away the unpured. And 
these pissemyres be great as hounds so that no man dare 
come to those hills, for the pissemyres would assail him and 
devour him anon, so that no man may get of that gold but by 
great sleight. And, therefore, when it is great heat, the 
pissemyres rest them from prime of the day unto noon. And 
then the folk of the country take camels, dromedaries and 
horses, and other beasts, and go thither, and charge them 
in all haste that they may... In that desert be many 
wild men that be hideous to look on, for they be horned and 
they speak nought, but they grunt as pigs. And there be 
many popinjays that they yclepe psitakes ! in their language. 
And they speak of their proper nature and salute men that 
go through the deserts, and speak to them as pertly as though 
it wereaman. And they that speak well have a large tongue 
and have five toes upon a foot. And there be also of other 

1 psittaci = parrots. 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 161 


manner, that have but three toes upon a foot, and they speak 
not or but little, for they cannot but cry. Jn that country 
and by all Ind be great plenty of ‘ cokodrilles’, that is a 
manner of a long serpent, and in the night they dwell in the 
water and on the day upon the land in rocks and in caves. 
And they eat no meat in all the winter, but they lie as in a 
dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men and 
they eat them weeping. And when they eat, they move 
the overjaw and nought the nether jaw, and they have no 
tongue. There also be many beasts that be yclept ‘ orafles ’,? 
in Araby they be yclept ‘ gerfaunts’ that is a beast pomely 
or spotted, that is little more high than a steed. But he hath 
a neck a twenty cubits long. And his crupper and his tail 
is as of a hart and he may look over a great high house. 
And there be also in that country many ‘ camles’,? and he 
liveth by the air and he eateth nought nor drinketh nought 
at no time. And he changeth his colour oftentime. For 
men see him often now in one colour and now in another 
colour, and he may change him into all manner colours that 
him list, save only into red and white . . . And here be also of 
other beasts as great or more greater than is a destrier,3 
and men yclept them ‘loeranez’ and some yclept them 
“odenthos’. And they have a black head and three long 
horns trenchant in the front, sharp as a sword and the body 
is slender; and he is a full felonous beast, and he chaseth 
and slayeth the ‘ oliphant’ ’’.4 

It was as impossible for the medieval reader to distinguish 
the true from the false in such tales as these, as it would be 
for ourselves unless by experience we had learned to do so. 
The *“‘ odenthos ”’ is no more incredible and “ pissemyres ”’ 
very little more than are the giraffe and the chameleon, 
but others of Mandeville’s tales must have been a hard test 
for even the most credulous medieval reader. As an example 
we may quote the story of the growing diamonds, a hardy 
survival from the fables of antiquity. “‘ Men find many 
time hard diamonds in a mass that cometh out of gold when 
they pure it and fine it out of the mine when men break 


1 Giraffes. 

2 Chameleons. 

3 War horse. 

4 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. Hamelius, i, pp. 192, 193, 200. 


M 


162 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


that mass in small pieces. And sometime it happeneth that 
men find some as great as a pea and some less and they be 
all as hard as those of Ind. And albeit that men find good 
diamonds in Ind, yet natheless men find them more commonly 
upon the rocks in the sea and upon hills where the mine of gold 
is. And they grow many together, one little, another great... 
and they be square and pointed of their own kind both above 
and beneath without working of man’s hand. And they 
grow together male and female, and they be nourished with 
the dew of heaven; and they engender children commonly 
and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the 
year. I have often times assayed that if a man keep them 
with a little of the rock, and with the May dew oft sithes 
they shall grow every year and the small will wax great. 
For right as the fine pearl congealeth and waxeth great of 
the dew of heaven, so doeth the very diamond. And right as 
the pearl of his own kind taketh roundness, right so the 
diamond by virtue of God taketh squareness.”’ 1 

In the mists of the Western Ocean, too, the middle ages 
imagined marvels. There lay islands that eluded those who 
sought them, but none of the stories of the geographers 
were more persistent or more generally accepted. The 
most celebrated of these islands were those of Saint Brandan, 
the Seven Cities, Brasil and Antilia, and again and again 
during the fifteenth and even the sixteenth centuries grants 
for their discoveries were sought and obtained from the 
Portuguese monarchs. It was said that in the year 565 
after Christ the Irish Saint Brandan came with his ship to a 
certain island in the Atlantic where he beheld many marvels, 
and after living there for seven years he returned to his own 
country. Though it could never be found again, its existence 
was firmly believed, and it was marked on even the most 
scientific maps for centuries. As late as 1755 St. Brandan’s 
Isle was placed 5° to the west of the Canaries, and maps even 
of the nineteenth century can be found recording it. 
Honorius of Autun in his geographical treatise of a.p. 1180 
described it thus : “* There is in the Ocean a certain isle agreeable 
and fertile beyond all others, unknown to men but discovered 
by chance and then sought for without anyone being able 
to find it again and so called the “ Lost Isle”. It was, so 

2 Tbid., ij 205. 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 163 


they say, the island whither once upon a time St. Brandan 
Caine, 

The story of the island of the Seven Cities was told by 
medieval writers with great wealth of detail and even more 
firmly believed. At the time of the conquest of Spain 
by the Moors—it was said—after the defeat and disappearance 
of King Roderick, seven bishops took ship with their followers 
and sailed out into the ocean. After a long voyage they 
landed on an unknown island and there, having burned 
their ships, they settled. Each of them built himself a 
dwelling place for himself and his flock, and so the island came 
to be called the “ Island of the Seven Cities’’. Even in the 
time of Prince Henry the Navigator the tradition was fully 
credited and a Portuguese captain came to the Prince with a 
story that he had found the island, but had been forced by 
its inhabitants to flee because they refused to have any 
communication with the ancient fatherland. “ The prince ”’ 
says Ferdinand Columbus, “ blamed [the captain and his 
sailors] severely, and ordered them to return to the island, 
to stay there for a time and to come again and report to him 
what they had seen. The men, struck with terror, betook 
them to their ship and sailed away and never appeared again 
in Portugal. Among other details [of their adventure] 
they related that their cabin boys who had brought away 
from the beach of the island some sand to clean their cooking 
pots, found that that sand was two-thirds composed of 
fine gold.” # 

Among the islands said to be situated in the far Western 
Ocean many medieval writers placed the Terrestrial Paradise, 
and this legend had so much influence on the minds of the 
first explorers of the new lands that it is of some importance. 
The idea of such a region is constant in Christian writers 
from the time of the early fathers Tertullian and St. 
Ambrose through Isidore of Seville down to Bonaventura 
and Thomas Aquinas, but though they agree upon many 
of the aspects of such a paradise they differ widely as to its 
situation. Cosmas, writing in the sixth century, tells us that 

1 P. Gaffarel, Histoire de la découverte de l Amérique avant Colomb 
(Paris, 1892), i, 205. 

2 History of the Life and Actions of Adm. Christopher Columbus 


written by his son T. Ferdinand Columbus in Churchill’s Voyages, 
(London, 1732). 


164 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


‘“‘The earth is divided into two parts by the sea that is 
called Ocean ; the one is the part that we live in and the 
other beyond the Ocean is that which is joined to heaven. 
Men lived in that land before the Deluge ; there also Paradise 
is situated ’’.1 | 

The writer of Mandeville places the Terrestrial Paradise 
so far in the east that it is also at the extremest end of the west, 
for, as he says, ‘“‘ The Lord God made the earth all round in 
the mid place of the firmament.”’ He does not claim to have 
been there, but professes to describe it as he has heard say 
of wise men of old. ‘‘ Paradise terrestre, as wise men say, 
is the highest place of earth that is in all the world, and it is 
so high that it toucheth nigh to the circle of the moon, there 
as the moon maketh her turn. For she is so high that the 
flood of Noé might not come to her that would have covered 
all the earth of the world all about and above and beneath 
save paradise alone . . . In the most high place of paradise, 
even in the middle place, is a well that casteth out the four 
floods that run by divers lands ... And by the rivers may 
no man go, for the water runneth so rudely and so sharply 
because that it cometh down so outrageously from the high 
places above, that it runneth in so great waves that no ship 
may not row nor sail against it. And the water roareth so 
and maketh so huge noise and so great tempest that no man 
hear other in the ship, though he cried with all the craft 
that he could with the highest voice that he might.” 2 Again 
the pseudo-Mandeville tells us in another passage ® that the 
Fountain of Eternal Youth springs from the Terrestial 
Paradise. ‘“‘ There is a fair well and a great that hath odour 
and savour of all spices; and at every hour of the day he 
changeth his odour and his savour diversely. And whoso 
drinketh three times fasting of that water of that well, he 
is whole of all manner sickness that he hath, and they that 
dwell there and drink often of that well they never have 
sickness, and they seem always young . . . Some men yclepe 
it the well of youth . . . and men say that that well cometh 
out of paradise and therefore it is so virtuous.”’ 

It would be of great interest to explore the persistence 


1 Cosmas, ed. McCrindle (Hakluyt Society, 1897), p. 33. 
2 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 202-3. 
he 13's (oom ae it 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 165 


of the ideas of the Terrestrial Paradise and the Fountain 
of Eternal Youth in the minds of explorers like Ponce de Leon 
who sought the fountain in Florida at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, and the sailors of the mid-eighteenth who 
poetically spoke of the island of Otaheite as Le Paradis 
Terrestre. But it would be beyond our scope and the 
quotation of a characteristic passage representing the typical 
medieval cosmogony of Columbus must suffice. His third 
voyage having resulted in his discovery of continental land 
he wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on his return 
to Hispaniola in October, 1498, to tell them of what he had 
found. In the course of this letter from which we have 
already quoted,! occurs the following remarkable passage :— 

““T have come to [the] conclusion respecting the earth, 
that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear, 
which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which 
part it is most prominent, or like a round ball, upon one part 
of which is a prominence like a woman’s nipple, this protrusion 
being the highest and nearest the sky, situated under the 
equinoctial line, and at the eastern extremity of this sea 
[ie. the Caribbean] ...I do not suppose that the 
earthly paradise is in the form of a rugged mountain, as the 
descriptions of it have made it appear, but that it is on the 
summit of the spot, which I have described as being in the 
form of the stalk of a pear ; the approach to it from a distance 
must be by a constant and gradual ascent; but I believe 
that no one could ever reach the top ... From the gulf 
to which I gave the name of the Gulf of Pearls? the water 
runs constantly with great impetuosity towards the east, 
and this is the cause why there is so fierce a turmoil from the 
fresh water encountering the water of the sea...I 
think that the water may proceed from the paradise, though 
it be far off, and that stopping at the place which I have just 
left, it forms a lake. There are great indications of this being 
the terrestrial paradise, for its site coincides with the opinion 
of the holy and wise theologians St. Isidore, Bede, Strabus, 
the master of scholastic history, St. Ambrose and Scotus, 
all of whom agree that the earthly paradise is in the east. 
And, moreover, the other evidences agree with the supposition, 


t Chapter: Toop 36: 
2 The modern Gulf of Paria. 


1466 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming 
in so large a quantity, in close conjunction with the water of 
the sea ; the idea is also corroborated by the blandness of the 
temperature . . . That the islands [in the seas] should possess 
the most costly productions is to be accounted for by the 
mild temperature, which comes to them from heaven, since 
these are the most elevated parts of the world.” + 

To the men of the middle ages as to the ancients the 
continent most abounding in marvels was Africa, and a 
problem of perennial interest was to account satisfactorily 
for the regular waxing and waning of the waters of the Nile. 
Mandeville connects the river with the earthly paradise 
and gives to it a most extraordinary course, showing how 
little sure knowledge there was in his time of the lands of the 
Moors. ‘“ This river cometh running from Paradys terrestre 
between the deserts of Ind and after it sinks into land and 
runneth long time many great countries under earth. And 
after it goeth out under an high hill that men yclepe Aloth 
that is between Ind and Ethiope...and after it 
environeth all Ethiope and Morekane and goeth all along 
from the land of Egypt into the city of Alisandre to the end of 
Egypt and there it falleth into the sea.” 2 

Libya and Mauretania, the country of desert Africa, were 
above all to most Europeans the land of marvels, though 
we shall show later that some men in the Mediterranean 
cities held a real knowledge of those countries. To quote the 
fictions of Mandeville again. ‘Between the Red Sea and 
Ocean sea toward the south is the kingdom of Ethiope and of 
Libya the higher, the which land of Libya, that is to say 
Libya the low, that beginneth at the sea of Spain from 
thence where the pillars of Hercules be, and dureth unto 
anenst Egypt and toward Ethiope. In that country of 
Libya is the sea more high than the land, and it seemeth 
that it would cover the earth, and natheless yet it passeth not 
his marks ... In that sea of Libya is no fish, for they 
may not live nor endure for the great heat of the sun, because 
that the water is evermore boiling for the great heat? ... 


1 Select letters of Columbus, ed. R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society, 1870), 
PP- 134, 141-2, 144. 

2 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 28. 

* Cf. the ideas of Lambert as discussed in Chap. I supra. 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 167 


The whole party meridional [of Africa] is yclept Moritania 
and the folk of that country be black ... and they be 
yclept Moors. In that part is a well that in the day it is so 
cold that no man may drink thereof, and in the night it is so 
hot that no man may suffer his hand therein... In that 
country be folk that have but one foot and they go so blue 
that it is marvellous. And the foot is so large that it 
shadoweth all the body against the sun when they would lie 
and rest them.” 4 

Mandeville abounds in descriptions of anatomical freaks, 
and much of his popularity may have been due to such strange 
fables, but he does not always commit himself to their exact 
geographical situation. ‘‘ In[a certain] isle towards the south 
dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed kind that have no 
heads, and their eyes be in their shoulders. And their mouth 
is crooked as an horse shoe, and that is in the midst of their 
breast. And in another isle be folk that have the face all 
flat, all plain without nose and without mouth, but they have 
two small holes all round instead of their eyes, and their 
mouth is flat also without lips. And in another isle be folk 
of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth 
so great that when they sleep in the sun, they cover all the 
face with that lip.” 2 Marvels such as these were the common 
stock in trade of popular medieval writers on geography, and 
ridiculous though they may be, they should not be entirely 
neglected in attempting to realize something of the attitude 
of mind of the travellers of the time, half critical and half 
credulous, but not wholly different from that of a later age 
which, having refused to accept the authentic pygmies and 
gorillas of Du Chaillu, accepted with hardly a qualm the 
** travellers tales ’’ of Louis de Rougemont. 


li. EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN THE 
MIpDLE AGES 


When we turn from amusing fictions to examine whether 
Kuropeans had authentic knowledge of the interior of the 
lands beyond the Moors in the Middle Ages, we find that 
although it left little trace in literature and has only recently 
been recovered, some real information had been obtained. 


1 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 96, 104. 
2 Tbid., i, 133-4. 


168 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Just as in the east political circumstances in the latter half 
of the thirteenth century threw open Central Asia to Kuropean 
travellers, especially Franciscan and Dominican friars, so 
about the same period, owing to Muslim toleration, they were 
able to penetrate for a time into North Africa. Under the 
dynasty of the Almohade emirs, who ruled over Morocco and 
Southern Spain in the twelfth century, many Christians were 
permitted to cross the Straits and settle in cities like Fez, 
Marrakesh, and Salli. Many Christian contingents served 
in the Moroccan armies and took part in the almost incessant 
civil wars. When the Almohades were defeated by the Berber 
tribe of the Beni Marin and the new dynasty of the Marinides 
was established, this policy of toleration was continued, 
especially under the enlightened Emir Yakub II]. From 1225 
onwards. Franciscans and Dominicans co-operated in 
establishing Christian bishoprics in Morocco, and in 1256 
we learn from the works of the missionary Humbert de 
Romans that the friars for several years, had been preaching 
in Arabic to the Moors.1 There was some commerce also, 
and the dates and alum of the south of Morocco on the 
borders of the desert were carried in the thirteenth century 
as far north as the fairs of Bruges there to be exchanged for 
cloth and leather. 

It was from the town of Sigilmessa beyond the main mass 
of the Atlas Mountains that the caravan routes passed out 
across the desert to the oases of the Sahara and the more 
fertile country of the Sudan far to the south. The first 
European who seems to have penetrated to these regions 
was an unnamed envoy of a certain cardinal of whom we learn 
from the writings of Raymond Lully at the end of the 
thirteenth century. The philosopher travelled much in 
North Africa in his efforts to convert the Moors and must 
have been familiar with many merchants engaged in the desert 
trade: though the Blanquerna, from which we derive our 
information, is an Utopian romance, M. de la Ronciére 
believes that it contains passages describing events that 
actually occurred. Lully tells us that :— 


+ M. Ch. de la Ronciére, the learned librarian of the Bibliotheque 
Nationale, has summed up the knowledge of Africa in the Middle Ages 
in his work La Découverte de ’ Afrique au Moyen Age, 2 vols., (Cairo, 
1924-5). 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 169 


“It chanced that [one of the cardinal’s messengers} 
travelling to the south found a caravan of 6,000 camels 
loaded with salt which left a town named Tabelbert 1 for the 
country where the river of Damietta [i.e. the Nile] takes its 
rise. The richness of that country was so great that he saw 
all the loads of salt sold in fifteen days. The people there were 
negroes and idolaters, leading a merry life and severely just. 
Lying was punished with death. All their goods were held 
in common. There was then an island in the middle of the 
lake, and in the island a dragon? honoured by the sacrifices of 
the natives and adored as god. The messenger went through 
those lands, inquiring about the local customs and the density 
of the population to the great astonishment of the people, 
for he was a white man and a Christian; and in the memory 
of man no Christian had ever before come into their country. 
The messenger sent word by one of his squires and in writing 
to the cardinal who had sent him forth, of all that has here been 
said and many other things. The cardinal reported it to the 
Pope and to his colleagues. Great was their disappointment 
to learn that the dragon was adored as a god, and they devised 
means to destroy the error in which those peoples lived.”” The 
place where the caravan disposed of its salt “was in the 
country of the south, in a region situated in the middle of the 
sands near toa town named Gana. There there are numerous 
idolatrous kings and princes who worship the sun and the stars 
and birds and beasts. The inhabitants of those lands are 
numerous ; they are of great stature and are negroes ’’. 3 

In an inscription attached to the map or portolan of 
Giovanni di Carignano which was drawn about 1320 there is 
further information about the Sahara that bears the stamp of 
accuracy. The Berbers of the desert, it says, “‘ go with their 
mouths always covered. They pay no toll to the Saracens. 
They are loyal merchants and receive the merchandise and 
money of Sigilmessa to carry them on camel-back to Oualata * 
and into Guinea. It takes them forty days to reach Oualata 
through the desert. They carry water and victuals on their 

1 The oasis of Tabelbala. 

2 Probably a sacred crocodile. 

3 Raymond Lully. Blanquerna, chaps. 88 and 91. Quoted by 
de la Ronciére, op. cit., i, 111-12. 


4 A town in the Western Sudan near the headwaters of the Senegal 
River. 


170 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


camels, for they find neither dwellings of men nor water 
between those towns. Sometimes they are wrapped in the 
dust of the sands when they are surprised by a furious wind. 
Sometimes the heat is so great, when the sun is at its zenith, 
that they pass blood. I [i.e. the cartographer] have learned 
all that from a Genoese merchant worthy of belief who lived 
at Sigilmessa and traded with them.”’ 

Only the most valuable commodities could repay the 
terrible risks and toils of the desert journey, but the lands 
beyond the Sahara had access to supplies both of gold dust 
and ivory, that would yield sufficient profit in the markets of 
the Mediterranean amply to recoup those who sought them. 
The land from which the gold dust came was the kingdom of 
Ghana lying beyond what the ancients called the Western 
Nile from a vague knowledge of the Senegal and the upper 
course of the Niger. John Leo Africanus, a Muslim of 
Spanish origin who wrote an elaborate description of Africa in 
Arabic at the beginning of the sixteenth century tells us 
that this land is “called by us [i.e. the Moors] Gheneoa, 
but by the men of Genoa, Portugal and Europe who have no 
exact knowledge of it, Ghinea. This kingdom extends 
along the Niger about 250 miles, of which a part is on 
the ocean shore. It is called Gualata towards the west, 
Tombut! on the eastern side and Melli in the part towards 
the south’’.2 Each of these regions is to be found marked 
in the beautiful maps that have come down to us from the 
Jewish cartographers who made Majorca famous in the 
fourteenth century. Those maps contain much more accurate 
detail of the geography of Africa than any other European 
source before the nineteenth century, and this information 
was available because of the large share that Jews took in the 
gold trade across the Sahara and their community of interest 
with their co-religionists on the other side of the Mediterranean. 

Tolerance of Christian residents and travellers among the 
Moors was only a passing phase, but Jews had lived and 
flourished in North Africa for centuries without molestation. 
The Genoese and Venetians made considerable use of Jewish 


1 i.e. Timbuktu. 

* Leo Africanus’ work has often been translated into European lan- 
guages. Translated into English by John Poryas A geographical historie 
of Africa written in Avabike and Italian by John Leo a More (London, 
1600). See also Purchas (Maclehose’s edn.), vols. v and vi. 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 171 


intermediaries in their attempts to secure a share of the 
valuable trade, but though we know that they achieved 
some measure of success, the traces that have been left are 
tantalizingly few. M. de la Ronciére has, however, recently 
brought to light a narrative of travel into the Sahara in the 
middle of the fifteenth century which shows what strenuous 
efforts the Genoese were making to cultivate new fields of 
commerce to replace those of the Black Sea that were being 
ruined by the Turks. 

Antonio Malfante, the author, was probably a Genoese 
in the employ of a merchant house that desired to find 
opportunities for trade in Africa, and in 1447 having travelled 
further into the heart of the desert than any Christian before 
him, he wrote from the large oasis of Touat to inform his 
employers of the knowledge he had gained concerning the 
caravan trade and the rich countries along the Niger whence 
came the gold and ivory. The letter is long and full of 
interesting details,1 but only a few extracts can here be 
summarized. ‘‘ After we were come from the sea that is to say 
from Honein [to Sigilmessa],”’ Malfante begins, “‘ we travelled 
for twelve days always towards the south in mounted caravan. 
- . - SO we came after that stage into the Touat. The place 
where we are 2 comprises eighteen quarters enclosed within a 
single wall, and governed by the power of an oligarchy 
{composed of the chiefs of the various quarters]. Travellers 
are taken under the protection of one of these chiefs, and so 
merchants find themselves in complete security. For I am 
a Christian and yet no one has ever said an unfriendly word 
to me. They have never before seen a Christian here. . 
Jews abound here, living peaceably in dependence on different 
masters who defend them. Business is carried on through 
their agency and there are many in whom one may have 
great confidence . . . The gold that is brought here is bought 
of those who come from the coast. . . . In the country of the 
negroes here there live the Philistines,? who camp in tents 
like the Arabs and reign as masters over all the lands from 

1 It is printed in the original Latin with a translation and a facsimile 
of certain pages in Ch. de la Ronciére, Découverte de l’A frique, i, 151-8. 
See also dela Ronciére, Découverte d’une relation de voyage, décrivant en 
1447 le bassin du Niger (Paris, 1919). 


* Tamentit, the capital of the oasis. 
3 i.e. Touaregs. 


172 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the confines of Egypt to the Ocean. . . . These white men 
are of a superb race and high countenance, and are 
incomparable horsemen who ride without saddles and with 
simple spurs. They have their mouths and noses covered 
with a veil. ... The lands that are under their dominion 
are on the borders of the lands of the negroes and the 
inhabitants follow the religion of Mahomet. The greater part 
of these people are negroes, but a small number are white 
men.’ ! Among other Mahometan states are Thambet 
[i.e. Timbuktu], Mali, Sagoto [Sokoto], and Bamba, and these 
are enumerated from east to west ascending the course of the 
river. 

“'To the south of the states there are many states and 
territories solely inhabited by idolatrous negroes, incessantly 
at war one with another to sustain their beliefs and their 
fetishes. . . . They worship tufted trees, the dwelling-place 
of a spirit whom they honour with sacrifices ;. others worship 
wooden and stone images to whom, they say, their incantations 
give speech. My lord here who is sheik of this land . . . is 
brother of a great merchant in Thambet and very worthy of 
belief. He relates that he lived in that place thirty years ; 
and my protector, as he says, stayed in the lands of the 
negroes for fourteen years, and every day he tells me marvels 
about those people. He says that those lands and peoples 
have no end towards the south. They all go naked only 
covering themselves with a little apron. They have 
abundance of flesh, milk and rice, but no wheat or barley. 

‘A very great river flows through those lands and at a 
certain time of the year it pours its floods over the lands, 
that river passes at the gates of Tambet and runs through 
Egypt, and it is the river which passes through Cairo.? 
They have upon it many barks in which they carry on their 
commerce. . . . Because battles are incessant among them 
they sell men into slavery at a maximum rate of two 
doubloons per head. . . . The place where I am is good, for 
Keyptians and other merchants come hither from the lands 
of the negroes bringing gold which they exchange for copper 
and other merchandise . . . I have often asked where the 


1 Men of Moorish, i.e., Berber stock. 
* This confusion of the Niger and the Nile was constant until the 
discoveries of the nineteenth century. 


TRAVELLERS’ TALES 173 


gold is found and collected, but my protector says ‘I have 
stayed fourteen years in the lands of the negroes, and I have 
never heard of nor seen any one who could speak of it with 
certain knowledge. Wherefore it must be thought that it 
comes from a far-off land, and according to my belief from 
one particular place’. Nevertheless, he said that once he 
was in a place where silver was worth as much as gold.” 

The whole of Malfante’s letter bears the stamp of accuracy 
and is of absorbing interest, but its importance arises especially 
from the date at which it was written, for the years 
immediately following 1447, as we shall see in a later chapter, 
are an important epoch in the work of exploration of the 
African coast by the Portuguese under the leadership of 
Prince Henry the Navigator. Many Genoese sailors and 
merchants took part in that work, and though we have no 
proof that Malfante’s information was accessible or known to 
the Infante, there can be no doubt that in the middle of the 
fifteenth century much more accurate information was coming 
to the Peninsula concerning the lands beyond the Moors than 
had been available at an earlier date. Through the Jews 
of Aragon and Majorca, the Moors of the captured cities of 
the Barbary Coast and possibly through Genoese and 
Venetian merchants who had traded in the interior, knowledge 
about the gold trade was brought, and the veil that covered 
the Dark Continent was lifted higher than it was ever to be 
again until centuries later. 


CHAPTER IX 
PRESTER JOHN AND THE EMPIRE OF ETHIOPIA 


By Sir E. DENISON Ross, C.I.E., Ph.D. 


eo documentary history of the legend of a great 

Christian priest-king ruling far away beyond the lands 
usually visited by Western travellers dates only from the 
twelfth century, though it is probable that the story was 
current in oral tradition much earlier. In the Chronicle of 
Otto von Freisingen,! written before 1158, there is a story 
that a few years before the capture of the Crusaders’ citadel 
of Edessa by the Moslems in 1144, a certain “ Johannes 
Presbyter ’’ had won a great victory over the Persians and 
the Medes. This victory has long ago been identified as 
that won over the Saljuq Sultan Sanjar in 1141 by the Turkish 
Khan Ye-lu-ta-shih,* and there were good excuses for the 
report that this Khan was a Christian. Von Freisingen had 
heard of this victory from the Syrian Bishop of Gabala on the 
coast of Syria whom he happened to meet in Viterbo in 1144. 
The bishop also told him that “ Prester John” was the 
Nestorian king of a country situated in the Far East ; that he 
was descended from the Magian kings ; and that he possessed 
fabulous wealth. News of the defeat of Sultan Sanjar may 
quite easily have reached Europe soon after the event, but 
we do not hear of any attempt to take advantage of this 
triumph of supposedly Christian arms. 

About 1165 there was circulated the famous forged letter from 
Prester John, which represented this monarch as ruling over 
the three Indias, and described his powers and possessions 
in the most exaggerated terms. 

‘John, Priest by the Almighty power of God and the 

1 Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, XX, p. 266. 

2 The actual date of this victory, 1141, is given by Albericus—who 


made use of Otto—but we do not know on what authority. See Mon. 
Germ. Hist. Scriptores IX, p. 580. 


PRESTER JOHN 175 


strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord 
of Lords, to his friend Emmanuel, Prince of Constantinople, 
greeting, wishing him health and the continued enjoyment 
of the Divine Favour. 

‘It hath been reported to our Majesty that thou holdest 
our Excellency in esteem, and that the knowledge of our 
highness has reached thee. 

‘* Furthermore we have heard through our secretary that 
it was thy desire to send us some objects of art and interest, 
to gratify our righteous disposition. Being but human we 
take it in good part, and through our secretary we transmit 
to thee some of our articles. Now it is our desire and we 
will to know if thou holdest the true faith, and in all things 
adherest to our Lord Jesus Christ, for while we know that 
we are mortal, people regard thee as a god; still we know 
that thou art mortal, and subject to human infirmities. 

** If thou shouldst have any desire to come into the kingdom 
of our majesty, we will place thee in the highest and most 
dignified position in our household, and thou mayest 
abundantly partake of all that pertains to us. Shouldst 
thou desire to return, thou shalt go laden with treasures. 
If indeed thou desirest to know wherein consists our great 
power, then believe without hesitation, that I, Prester John, 
who reign supreme, surpass in virtue, riches and power all 
creatures under heaven. Seventy kings are our tributaries. 
Iam a zealous Christian and universally protect the 
Christians of our empire, supporting them by our alms. 
We have determined to visit the sepulchre of our Lord with 
a very large army, in accordance with the glory of our majesty 
to humble and chastise the enemies of the cross of Christ 
and to exalt his blessed name. 

** Honey flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds. 
In one region there no poison exists and no noisy frog croaks, 
no scorpions are there, and no serpents creeping in the grass. 

‘*“ No venomous reptiles can exist there or use there their 
deadly power. In one of the heathen provinces flows a river 
called the Indus, which, issuing from Paradise, extends its 
windings by various channels through all the province ; 
and in it are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, 
chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardonyxes, and many other 
precious stones. 


176 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


‘‘ Between the sandy sea and the aforesaid mountains, 
is a stone in a plain, of incredible medical virtue which cures 
Christians or Christian candidates of whatever infirmities 
afflict them, in this manner. There is in the stone a mussel- 
shaped cavity, in which the water is always four inches deep, 
and this is kept by two holy and reverend old men. These 
ask the new-comers whether they are Christians, or do 
desire to be so, and then if they desire the healing of the whole 
body, and if the answer is satisfactory, having laid aside 
their clothes they get into the shell; then if their profession 
is sincere, the water begins to increase and rises over their 
heads ; this having taken place three times, the water returns 
to its usual height. Thus every one who enters, leaves it 
cured of whatsoever disease he had. 

‘.For gold, silver, precious stones, animals of every kind 
and the number of our people, we believe there is not our 
equal under heaven. There are no poor among us; we 
receive all strangers and wayfarers ; thieves and robbers find 
no place among us, neither adultery nor avarice. When we 
go to war, we have carried before us fourteen golden crosses 
ornamented with precious jewels, in the place of banners, 
and each of these is followed by ten thousand mounted 
troopers and a hundred thousand infantry; besides those 
who are charged with the care of the baggage, carriages and 
provisions. | 

‘* Flattery finds no place ; there is no division among us; 
our people have abundance of wealth ; our horses are few and 
wretched. We believe we have no equal in the abundance 
of riches and numbers of people. When we go out at ordinary 
times on horseback, our Majesty is preceded by a wooden 
cross, without decoration or gold or jewels, in order that we 
may always bear in mind the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Also a golden vase full of earth to remind us that our body 
must return to its original substance—the earth. There is 
also a silver vase filled with gold borne before us, that all may 
understand that we are Lord of Lords. Our magnificence 
abounds in all wealth, and surpasses that of India. 

**'The palace in which our sublimity dwells, is after the 
pattern of that which the holy Thomas erected for the king 
Gundoforo, and resembles it in its various offices, and 
everything in the other parts of the edifice. The ceilings, 


PRESTER JOHN 177 


pillars and architraves are of rarest wood. The roof of the 
same palace indeed is of ebony, lest by any means it might 
be destroyed by fire or otherwise. At the extremities over 
the gables, are two golden apples in each of which are two 
carbuncles, that the gold may shine by day, and the carbuncles 
sparkle by night. The larger palace gates are of sardonyxes, 
inlaid with snakes’ horn, so that nothing poisonous may enter. 
The others indeed are also of ebony. The windows are of 
crystal. The tables on which our courtiers eat are of gold and 
some of amethyst. The standards supporting the tables are 
some of ebony and some of amethyst. In front of the palace 
is the court in which our justice is accustomed to watch the 
combatants. The pavement is of onyx, in order that by 
virtue of the stones the courage of the combatants may be 
increased. In the aforesaid palace no light is used at night, 
but what is fed by balsam. The chamber in which our 
sublimity reposes is marvellously decorated with gold and 
stones of every kind. 

‘** At our table, thirty thousand men, besides occasional 
visitors are daily entertained ; and all there partake of our 
bounty whether it be for horses or other expenses. The table 
made of the most precious emeralds is supported by four 
amethyst pillars ; by virtue of which stone, no person sitting 
at the table can become inebriated. 

** Every month we are served in rotation by seven kings, 
sixty-two dukes, and two hundred and sixty-five counts and 
marquises, besides those who are sent on various missions in 
our interest. 

‘* Twelve archbishops sit on our right at table to meals 
every day, and twenty bishops on our left. The Patriarch 
of St. Thomas, the Metropolitan of Samarcand, and the 
Bishop of Susa, where our glory resides and our imperial 
palace is, each in his turn is ever present with us. 

“If again thou askest how it is that the Creator of all 
having made us the most superpotential and most glorious 
over all mortals—does not give us a higher dignity or more 
excellent name than that of Priest (Prester), let not thy 
wisdom be surprised on this account, for this is the reason. 
We have many ecclesiastics in our retinue of more dignified 
name and office in the Church, and of more considerable 
standing than ours in the divine service. For our house- 

N 


178 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


steward is a patriarch and king; our cup-bearer is an 
archbishop and king ; our chamberlain is a bishop and king ; 
our archimandrite, that is chief pastor or master of the horse, 
is a king and abbot. Whereof our highness has not seen it 
repugnant to call himself by the same name and to distinguish 
himself by the order of which our court is full. And if we 
have chosen to be called by a lower name and inferior rank, 
it springs from humility. If indeed you can number the 
stars of heaven and sands of the sea, then you may calculate 
the extent of our dominion and power.”’ 

This forged letter, which purports to have been written 
by Prester John, was in the first instance addressed to 
Manuel I, Emperor of Byzantium, who in his turn forwarded 
it to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.t_ That such a letter 
should ever have been regarded as genuine is hard for us to 
believe to-day. But if it was believed, one can easily picture 
the anxiety of Europeans to discover this monarch, if only 
on account of his great wealth. The popular legends of 
Alexander the Great lay at the root of all the amazing 
statements of the forgery. Up to this stage in the 
documentary legend of Prester John, we are led to look for 
him in what is vaguely known as “‘ India’”’. And if the view 
is correct that the verbal legend originally referred to the King 
of Ethiopia, we may explain the transference of Prester 
John’s habitat to Asia first to the fact that Ethiopia was 
regarded in the Middle Ages as one of the Three Indias, 
though it was not known exactly where it was ; and secondly 
to the fact that reports of the conversion of the Turks to 
Christianity had reached Europe. 

If we imagine that in the twelfth century, if not earlier, 
travellers’ tales were current in Italy and France regarding 
a mighty Christian Emperor living somewhere in India, 
probably ruling over all the Indies when the famous forgery 
was spread about Europe between 1165 and 1177, numbers 
of people would be prepared to accept it as genuine, if only 
because it confirmed these travellers’ tales. The report 
contained in the Chronicle of Otto von Freisingen and the 
continuation, may very well have been known only to a few 
scholars, but it was certainly known to the writer who 
perpetrated the forgery, which must be regarded as one of 

1 The earliest French versions are addressed direct to Frederick. 


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PRESTER JOHN 179 


the biggest literary hoaxes ever attempted. On the sole ground 
that he is said to have translated it from Greek into Latin, 
the letter has been attributed to Christian, Archbishop of 
Mainz, who was a partisan of Frederick Barbarossa in his 
opposition to Pope Alexander III. Seeing that no Greek 
original has ever been found, the Archbishop must be 
regarded at least as suspect. But he must have kept his 
secret very close, and have been overjoyed at the popularity 
of his invention. Some idea may be formed of the wide 
currency the letter obtained from the fact that there are more 
than a hundred manuscripts of the letter preserved in the 
Libraries of Europe. The British Museum alone possesses 
ten in the original Latin, one in French and two in English, 
and there are also a number of versions in German. 

In the meantime Pope Alexander III had learnt from his 
private doctor Philipus, and from others, that “ Prester 
John, king of India’”’ was anxious to be instructed in the 
true Catholic faith; that he wished to have a church in 
Rome and an altar in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at 
Jerusalem. The Pope therefore dispatched Philipus to 
discover this king, bearing a letter, of which various texts— 
differing very much in length—have been preserved. It is 
dated 27th September, 1177. This letter does not appear to 
have been suggested so much by the forged letter, as by the 
story brought to the knowledge of the Pope by his own 
doctor Philipus. We know nothing of this doctor beyond 
what we are told in the Pope’s letter, but it is quite likely 
that he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and had encountered 
pilgrims from the actually existing Christian kingdom of 
Abyssinia, who had charged him to convey the message he 
brought to the Pope regarding the pious ambitions of their 
king, and there is every reason to believe that we have 
here the first documentary allusion to the King of 
Ethiopia. 

One can imagine the Pope being convinced of the bona fides 
of the Doctor Philipus, and thereupon sending him on a 
mission and entrusting him with a letter couched in 
sympathetic terms. It may be recalled that Alexander III 
had been engaged in a continual struggle with Frederick 
Barbarossa from 1159 down to 1177, when the latter, by the 
Peace of Venice, at last recognized the claims of Alexander III 


180 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to the Papacy.!' Doctor Philipus, we may presume, set out 
with this letter, and for all we know to the contrary, may have 
delivered it to the Negus of Abyssinia. But we never hear of 
the Doctor again, and the first stage in the Prester John 
inquiry thus ends in 1177. 

It must be remembered that during the period of the 
Crusades the only known road to Abyssinia was blocked 
by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt. The Ethiopians themselves 
were hemmed in all round by the Muslims, and even had 
they wished, could not have effectively come to the aid of the 
Crusaders. An instructive example of this state of affairs 
is to be found in the Arabic History of the Mamluk Sultans 
by Mufazzal ibn Abu’l-Faza’il ? which tells us that in the year 
A.H. 677 (A.D. 1273) the Sultan received a letter from the 
king of Abyssinia, which had been sent under cover of a 
letter addressed to the king of Yemen, asking the Sultan to 
order the Patriarch of Alexandria to appoint a Bishop for 
Kthiopia. From this we may judge how strict was the watch 
kept on Prester John by the Sultan of Egypt, and 
consequently how difficult it would be for Europeans to enter 
Abyssinia. It is indeed remarkable that during the first six 
Crusades we hear of no definite effort being made to discover 
the whereabouts of this potential Christian ally. It was not 
the Crusades, but the invasion of Europe by the Mongols in 
the middle of the thirteenth century that led to the dispatch 
of the first mission to find Prester John in Central Asia. 
In 1241 the Mongols reached Silesia, and it seemed that 
nothing could stay their relentless onward march, when 
suddenly the news of the death of the great Khan Ogodai 
caused them all to return to Tartary. It seems almost 
incredible that Europe should have been saved from further 
devastation simply by the circumstance that a new Khan 
had to be elected. 

The Western nations now set about discovering who these 
strange nomads really were, where they came from, and how 


1 In Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (under “ Prester 
John ’’) it is stated, but not upon what authority, that this treaty 
was signed in July, 1177, and that Alexander III remained in Venice 
until October, and in the interval received an Embassy from Prester 
John. 

* Edited and translated by E. Blochet. Patrologia Onenitalis, 
Tom. XIV. 


PRESTER JOHN 181 


to keep them off in future. In 1245 Innocent IV sent a 
letter to the Khan of the Tartars by the hand of Pian de 
Carpine, the Dominican. Pian de Carpine set out from Lyons 
in April, 1245, and took nearly ten months to cross Europe, 
only leaving Kiev in February of the following year. Twenty 
days later he encountered the first Mongols, by whom he was. 
sent on to the Volga where he met Batu, the grandson of 
Chingiz Khan. Batu, having examined the Pope’s letter 
which he caused to be translated into Mongolian, decided to 
send Pian de Carpine on to the Grand Khan. The Dominican 
reached the Imperial camp, near Karakorum, in July, and 
there witnessed the enthronement of Kuyuk, who had 
succeeded Ogodai. Pian de Carpine was well received, and 
returned safely to Lyons at the end of 1247 bringing the reply 
of the Grand Khan to Innocent IV. This reply was drawn 
up in three languages. First a version was written in 
Mongolian, and this was translated into Latin, and finally, 
at the last moment a Sarasin version was prepared. The 
Latin version has long been known in Europe, but the 
Sarasin version has only quite recently been discovered 
in the Vatican, and turns out to be written in Persian. This 
important discovery, made known to us by Monsieur Paul 
Pelliot,1 has thrown a flood of new light on the history of the 
missions which passed between the Pope and the Mongols. 

A few years later Saint Louis sent William of Rubruck on a 
similar mission to that of Pian de Carpine. At this juncture 
the Christians and the Mongols found themselves opposed 
to a common enemy, the Mamluks of Egypt. Numerous 
embassies passed between the Christians and the Mongols, 
which were all abortive, and intercourse finally came to an 
end with the formal adoption of Islam by the Mongols of 
Persia at the beginning of the fourteenth century. 

The story of the European travellers into China in the 
thirteenth century forms the subject of another chapter in 
this book, and it is therefore needless here to discuss at any 
length the adventures of Pian de Carpine, Rubruck, Marco 
Polo or Oderic de Pordenone. There can be little doubt 
that these travellers all cherished a hope that they might 
discover Prester John in Tartary. As Yule says: “ When 


1 Les Mongols et la Papauté in La Revue de l’Orieni Chrétien, 31éme 
Série, T. iii (xxiii), 1922-3, pp. 3-30. 


182 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the Mongol conquests threw Asia open to the Frank travellers 
in the middle of the thirteenth century, their minds were 
full of Prester John; they sought in vain for an adequate 
representative and they found several. . . and the honour of 
identification with Prester John, after hovering over one head 
and another, settled finally upon that of the king of the 
Keraits.”’ 

No trace has yet been found of the presence of Christians 
in China prior to the year A.D. 686. What we know of the 
earliest Nestorian missions is due to the discovery of the 
famous inscription in Chinese and Syriac which was erected 
in Si-an-fu in A.D. 781. By the year 1000 there probably 
did not remain a single Nestorian church in China proper, 
but long after this date the Nestorians continued to flourish 
in Central Asia. The two principal tribes who carried on 
the faith were the Keraits and the Onguts. These Turkish 
tribes had been converted to Christianity by the influence of 
Nestorian merchants, and priests were sent to them by the 
Metropolitan of Merv. The Great Khan Ye-lu-ta-shih who 
defeated Sanjar in 1141, was not a Kerait Turk but a Kitan, 
and it was probably the mistaken notion that he was a 
Christian Kerait that led to the rumour that this conqueror 
of the Moslem Seljugs was a Nestorian. Pian de Carpine 
and William Rubruck both hoped that they had found 
some trace of Prester John, but the only identification which 
gained any popularity was made by Marco Polo, who thought 
he had discovered him in the person of a certain Ong Khan or 
more correctly Wang Khan, a Christian Turk of the Kerait 
family, who, after a long period of friendly relations with 
Chingiz Khan, was finally attacked and slain by the Mongol 
Khan, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The 
Christian prince whom Marco Polo himself saw was named 
George. He imagined this man to be a descendant of Ong 
Khan, but modern research has proved him to belong not 
to the Keraits, but to the other tribe of Christian Turks known 
as the “ Ongut’’. It was in the country of the Onguts that 
Oderic of Pordenone, writing in 1830, thought that he had 
discovered the land of Prester John. He was the last 
traveller to place the priest-king in Central Asia, but Marco 
Polo’s work had so much influence and was so widely read 
that the legend of a Central Asian Prester John long 


PRESTER JOHN 183 


survived among scholars and educated men in Western 
Europe. 

Let us now turn to a different line of approach which 
has hitherto been somewhat neglected, and examine how it 
came about that among the Portuguese of the fifteenth 
century it was the Emperor of Ethiopia who was uniformly 
spoken of as “‘ Prester John’. Our first consideration must 
be directed rather to some little-known Portuguese historians 
than to Prester John himself. 

The fate of the works of the great Jesuit missionaries 
to Abyssinia is as romantic as the adventures of the 
missionaries themselves ; for although during the sixteenth 
century half a dozen really fine histories of Ethiopia were 
written in Portuguese, it was not until the beginning of the 
present century that the best of them saw the light of print. 
Though the histories reached Lisbon in safety, they were 
wholly disregarded, and it was not until the year 1660 that a 
certain Balsazar Tellez published an epitome of two of them, 
those of Almeida and Paez.1 Tellez’ work was only an 
abridgment, but the next step is represented by further 
abridgment in the shape of Latin, French and English 
adaptations of the epitome. The only important works 
of the group that became generally known more or less in 
their complete form were those of Father Lobo and of Affonso 
Alvarez. But the works of Father Lobo and Affonso Alvarez 
are chiefly narratives of travel and adventure and contain 
very little regarding the history of Ethiopia. Paez, Almeida 
and others made a profound study of the language and 
history of Ethiopia, but there seems to have been some 
rooted objection in Portugal to making known the results of 
their researches. Thanks to the untiring labours of Father 
Beccari, and the liberality of the Jesuits in Rome, all these 
unpublished chronicles have now been carefully printed.? 

It thus came about that the views held by the real 
historians of Ethiopia regarding the name of Prester John 
were only known to the world through the abridged accounts 
given by Tellez and later writers ; and an examination of the 


1 The Historia de Ethiopia a alta, of Tellez, printed in Coimbra in 
1660, is so rare that only a few copies are known to exist to-day. 

2 P.C. Beccari. Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti 
a saeculo XVI ad saeculum XIX. Roma, 1905, etc. 


184 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


original sources reveals a considerable distortion of the facts 
on the part of the compilers. 

The following considerations may be advanced ; first, that 
the origin of the name John as applied to a priest-king is to be 
found in the Amharic language ; secondly, that Marco Polo, 
as known to the Portuguese, did possibly locate part of 
Prester John’s kingdom in’ Ethiopia; thirdly, that 
Abyssinian envoys in the fifteenth century tried to invent an 
etymology in order to please the Portuguese ; and fourthly, 
that the Portuguese were never able to reconcile the name 
with the generally accepted legend, except by supposing 
Ethiopia to be all that remained of Prester John’s vast 
empire. 

There have been, as it were, two schools of thought among 
recent writers, (1) those who hold that Prester John must be 
sought in Tartary, and (2) those who think he belongs to 
Africa. Yet a third theory was put forward by the Russian 
scholar Bruun in 1876, who suggested that Prester John 
might be found among the kings of Georgia, but this theory, 
though regarded with some indulgence by Sir H. Yule, is 
summarily dismissed by Zarncke, who declares that it does 
not furnish an atom of probability. Apart from the well- 
known researches of Yule, the principal monographs are 
those of Gustav Oppert1! and Zarncke.? Quite recently a 
valuable resumé of the whole question has been published 
by the Rumanian scholar Constantin Marinescu,® but the 
real pioneers in the field, like Kircher, Mosheim and d’Avezac 
are forgotten. 

It must be remembered that from the middle of the 
fifteenth century the name “ Prester John” invariably 
means Emperor of Abyssinia, for by that time this title 
had been universally adopted by the Portuguese, and was 
used as much as we use the titles Shah, Tsar, Kaiser and 
Sultan. My own impression is that it was as a general title 
that it first reached Europe ; that from the outset it referred 
to the King of Ethiopia, and that the confusion which arose 


1G. Oppert. Der Presbytery Johannes in Sage und Geschichte. 
Berlin, 1864. 

2 Fr. Zarncke. Der Priester Johannes, in the Abhandlungen der 
phil.-hist. Classe der K. Séchsischen Gesell. d. Wissenschaften, § VII 
(1879) § VIII (1883). 

® Bulletin de Vv Academie Roumaine, vol. x, Bucharest, 1923. 


PRESTER JOHN 185 


in the twelfth century was partly due to the wide application 
of the term “ India ”’, and partly to the inaccessibility of 
Ethiopia. In order to explain how the name came to be 
applied to the emperor of Ethiopia, we must go back to the 
early history of the Abyssinian Church. Christianity is said 
to have been introduced into Abyssinia about the middle 
of the fourth century by a certain Frumentius, a commercial 
traveller, who was eventually appointed first Bishop of Axum 
by Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria. It was this 
conversion which first brought the Abyssinians out of their 
own country, notably for the purpose of making the 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and it was the dependence of the 
Abyssinian Church on the Patriarch of Alexandria which 
brought them into further contact with the European 
merchants in Egypt. After the rise of Islam, when 
pilgrimages to Jerusalem became a difficult matter, Abyssinia 
—though spared until the sixteenth century from Muslim 
invasion—was more or less isolated, but the practice of 
importing their ‘‘ Abuna”’, or chief prelate from Alexandria 
continued ; and thus foreigners in Alexandria no doubt often 
heard of the Christian Emperor in Africa. It is highly 
probable that it was the Italian merchants and sailors who 
first brought home stories of the great Christian Emperor 
who lived in a country beyond Egypt, and whose subjects, as 
far as they knew, were all priests. The Emperor must 
therefore also be a priest, and thus one of his titles became 
** Presbyter ” or ‘ Prester ”’. 

The earliest conception of the kingdom of Prester John 
was no doubt a sort of immense Indian Empire corresponding 
somewhat to the Roman Empire, and there is written 
evidence to show that when a Prester John was at last 
thought to have been discovered in Ethiopia, this country 
was supposed to be the section of India to which his once 
vast kingdom had been reduced by the conquests of the 
Tartars. In support of this view we may cite an Italian 
writer of the fifteenth century and a Portuguese historian 
of the sixteenth century. A certain Genoese traveller 
named Antonio Uso di Mare wrote as follows in 1455 :— 

‘“The Emperor and Christian Patriarch of Nubia and 
Ethiopia, Prester John, is called Abet Selip, that is ‘ Hundred 
Men’. This of course is an error, for the title is obviously 


186 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


a corruption of Abdus-Salib, or “Servant of the Cross’’, a 
name given to him by his Muslim enemies. ‘“ These 
countries are all that is left to Prester John, since the great 
Khan of Cathay, named Castigan, gave battle to him in 1187 
in the beautiful plain of Tenduch in Cathay. Crushed by the 
innumerable multitude of his adversaries, Prester John lost 
all the territories he possessed in Asia. He only kept the 
provinces of Ethiopia and Nubia, which abound in gold and 
suiver:?ia 

The other passage comes from the famous History of King 
Manoel of Portugal by Damiao Goes, first published in 1567. 
In chapters 58, 59, and 60 of Book III we read that King 
John II of Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Antonio de 
Payva on a mission chiefly in order to discover the heretical 
Christian Emperor “in India” and to convert him to the 
true religion. Goes goes on to say that “* Covilham did not 
of course find Prester John in India, as according to Paul the 
Venetian [i.e. Marco Polo] this monarch had been defeated 
and killed by the Emperor of China, and there were never any 
more Prester Johns in that part of the world, although there — 
were still many Nestorians in the interior of India ’’. 

How ignorant the Portuguese were of the actual extent 
of Prester John’s realms, even in 1520 when a mission was 
sent under da Lima, is shown by the instructions issued to the 
mission to ascertain whether these realms extended as far 
as the Cape of Good Hope. Another Portuguese writer, 
Paez,?2 whose account of Abyssinia, though written in the 
sixteenth century, has only recently been published in the 
original Portuguese, gives the following information regarding 
Prester John :— 

‘** Authors hold many and various opinions concerning 
the extent and position of the kingdoms and provinces which 
are comprehended under the name of Ethiopia; but I shall 
not attempt either to approve or refute their views, for my 
object here is only to discuss that region which is governed 
by the Emperor we usually call Prester John. Now although 
many and serious authors affirm that this Emperor is not 
Prester John but quite another king, who is contiguous with 


1 See Ch. de la Ronciére, La Découverte de l'Afrique au moyen age 
(Cairo, 1925), vol. ii, p. 122. 
2 See Beccari, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 13. 


PRESTER JOHN 187 


the Tartars, where there are still Christians, as I was recently 
assured by a mancebo, natural de Tartaria, who landed in 
this country : nevertheless in this history I shall call him 
Prester John, as he is better known in Europe by this name 
than by any other.” 

The earliest discussion of the name from the point of view 
of Ethiopia occurs in another work by Damiao Goes which 
first appeared in Latin in 1540. The explanation given to 
him by certain Abyssinian envoys may be translated as 
follows :— 

‘*Our Emperor is always called Preciosus Ioannes, and 
not Presbyter Ioannes, as is everywhere mooted. This 
name (agnomem) is written in our language with the 
characters "H"4: ‘ON@rA: which is pronounced Ioannes Belul, 
that is John the Precious or High, and in Chaldee [i.e. Geéz] 
it is written "H%4: -O%PA that is, Iannes Encoe, which if 
you translate it also means John the Precious or High. He 
is called Emperor of Ethiopia and not of Abyssinia as Mathew 
(the envoy) wrongly stated. For Mathew was an Armenian 
and could not know our affairs thoroughly, more especially 
those respecting our religion.” } 

These statements contain a number of errors, as later 
Portuguese writers discovered for themselves. The Amharic 
characters as printed in the Paris edition of 1541, have been 
specially cut out by someone ignorant of the alphabet, 
but as here printed the letters are what they were originally 
intended for. It was unfair of the Abyssinians to say that "H1: 
(more correctly "H™4:) Zan is pronounced Toannes; and the 
letter "H” Z does not exist in the Chaldee (Geéz) language at 
all. It is, however, the case that the correct title of their 
ruler is Emperor of Ethiopia [ya Etiopia Negus]. 

There is a very curious passage in the Ethiopian History 
of Tellez which deserves quotation as it may possibly be of 
some importance to the bibliography of Marco Polo. 
Although this passage has been preserved in the English 
translation, it has apparently never attracted the attention 
it deserves. It runs as follows :— 

**Marcus Paulus Venetus, in his Itinerary, very much 
strengthened the vulgar error, writing that the great King 
called Prester John used to reside in Archico, which is the 


1 D. Goes, Fides, religio, moresque, Aethiopum sub imperio Pretiosi 
Joannis (second edition, Paris, 1541), pp. 88, 89. 


188 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


first known town belonging to Ethiopia within the Red Sea.”’ 
Now there is no allusion either to this fact, nor any mention 
of Archico [Arkiko], in Yule’s exhaustive edition of Marco 
Polo or in Pauthier’s. It is also remarkable that in Tellez’ 
rare allusions to Marco Polo his book of travel is always 
called Itinerario, a title which appears, as far as | am aware, 
only in the Latin version printed in Amsterdam in 1585. 
Tellez gives the reference as Chapter 52. 

The fullest discussion of the name Prester John is, however, 
to be found in the first chapter of Almeida’s ‘‘ History of 
Abyssinia ’’,! which as it has only recently been published 
in the original is perhaps worth translating in full :-— 

‘* This name is so generally used in Portugal and Europe 
in speaking of the Emperor of the Abyssinians that of 
necessity some explanation of it must be given by anyone 
undertaking to write a history of Ethiopia and of this 
Abyssinian Empire. 

‘But, as nearly all historians writing on the things of this 
world dispute this point, investigating and giving different 
reasons for and versions of this name, I have no intention 
of delaying in order to repeat that which can easily be found 
in their works; I will only state that among them Father 
Nicolao Godinho,? of our society, in Book I, Chapter V of his 
work on matters relating to Abyssinia, treats this point with 
the greatest erudition, and establishes in this work with mature 
judgment and the greatest erudition two assured and well 
founded facts. First, that the name Prester or Presbyter 
John was originally given to a Christian Emperor, although 
a Nestorian, who reigned in the desert of Asia, whose ordinary 
name was Joanam, taken from Jonas the Prophet (this name 
has been erroneously changed by Europeans into Jodo). 
This name was as common among the rulers of that monarchy 
as was that of ‘“ Pharaoh’’ among the kings of Egypt; the 
term ‘* Presbyter’’ was taken from the cross which was 
always carried before him, as among our own people it is 
carried before Archbishops and Primates ; it is said that when 
he made war two crosses were carried, one of gold and one of 
precious stones, testifying to the Christian religion which he 
professed, and by the richness of the material of which they 


1 See Beccari : op. cit., vol. v, pp. 3-6. 
3 De Abassinorum Rebus, Lugduni, 1615. 


PRESTER JOHN 189 


were made in the same degree as precious stones and gold 
surpass silver, copper, iron or any other metal, so does the 
Christian religion surpass all the monarchs of the world in 
power and nobility. 

‘“‘The second fact established by Father Nicholao Godinho 
is that the application of this name of Emperor of Asia to the 
ruler of Ethiopia arose from the mistake made by Pedro de 
Covilhaio, who had been sent with another companion (as we 
shall explain in detail below) by the King Dom Joao IT of 
enlightened memory to discover India and the Christian 
Emperor commonly known as Prester John, whose fame at 
that time was very widespread in Europe. In Cairo, 
Suakim and Aden, where he landed on returning from India, 
he heard many things of the Emperor of Abyssinia, amongst 
others that he was a Christian, master of many large kingdoms, 
that he was in holy orders, and carried a cross. Being 
convinced that his search had been successful, and that this 
was Prester John whom his king had sent him to seek, he 
wrote to him from Cairo to this effect. The news, welcomed 
in Portugal, spread throughout Europe, and caused the 
Emperor of Abyssinia from that day to this to be commonly 
called by all Prester John; a contributory factor in the 
extinction of the monarchy of Joanam in Asia was that no 
Christian Emperor having been heard of there for so many 
years, the rising fame of the African ruler confirmed the 
latter in the title of Prester John due to the Asiatic king. 

‘The truth of the matter has never, up to to-day, been 
doubted, nor will it be so by anyone in Ethiopia, for either 
they are ignorant that their Emperor is known by this name, 
or if we mention it they become alarmed and seek information, 
but are unable to find anything corresponding to the term or 
title in their language. Nevertheless there are some in 
Kurope influenced by Caga Za Ab (whom Domiao de Goez, 
in the third part of the Chronicle of King Dom Manoel, 
Chap. 60, calls Zagazabo), an ambassador who, commanded by 
King David, went there to visit His Excellency Dom Jodo III 
of Portugal, and also by that of Pedro, likewise an Abyssinian, 
who accompanied Father Francisco Alvarez of Ethiopia to 
Portugal, and thence to Italy when he took the letters of the 
Emperor David to Pope Clement VII, and both one and the 
other, Caga Za Ab and Pedro, wished to devise versions of this 


199 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


name in their language; they did this easily among people 
unacquainted with it, feigning that they acted by authority, 
and saying that the name Prester John was derived from 
Belul and Jan, that this was the same as Precious Gian, 
and that we ourselves in saying Jodo were merely corrupting 
the name Jan. All this is fiction without foundation in 
fact, although someone in Valencia! had an idea that we 
ought to say Beldigian, and that Belul Jan was not two but 
one word only. 

‘* There is no doubt that the Abyssinians call their Emperor 
Jan, and sometimes Belul as well, but both names are never 
used together ; 1t would be considered a great solecism and 
vulgarity among them if anyone said “ Belul Jan ”’ or “‘ Jan 
Belul’’; after each of these names the word “ ghoj”’ is usually 
added, it is synonymous with our word “ my” when used 
to signify affection and tenderness; as an expression of 
endearment we say to a child, “my dear,” “ my prince,” 
“my king’’; and this is approximately what the Abyssinians 
‘wished to convey when addressing their king. They say 
** Janghoj’’, “* Ianghoj”’ or *‘ Belulghoj”’, although this second 
name is less used among them than the first. The root of the 
matter is this: Jan, in the ancient Ethiopian language is said 
to mean elephant, and because this animal is the most 
powerful and the most alarming of all, his name is given to the 
king as a title of honour and majesty. Therefore those who 
appeal at the court of the emperor that he may dismiss them 
or command the complaints they bring to be heard, cry this 
name loudly, if they are Amaras, “‘ Janqhoj, Janghoj,” until 
the Emperor commands a servant to listen to their requests. 
I said if they are Amaras, because if they are Moors they cry 
‘Sidi, Sidi’? and if Portuguese ‘“‘Senhor, Senhor”’ which is 
the same, if Tigres “‘ Adarie, Adarie’’. Those belonging 
to other nationalities with other languages make use of the 
terms peculiar to them. 

‘“‘The name Belul is less used; it really signifies a jewel or 
ornament, which on the death of the reigning ruler and 
election of a new Emperor, was entrusted to an official, 
whose duty it was to go and communicate the news to the 


1 This refers to Luis de Urreta, who wrote a Historia de la Etiopia, 
Valencia, 1610, which was very severely criticized by his contem- 
poraries. 


PRESTER JOHN 191 


elected Emperor and place the ornament in his ear, the 
certain and infallible sign of his election ; hence some called 
the new Emperor after the name of the ornament 
‘* Belulghoj’’, which is equivalent to ““my jewel”? or “my 
chosen ”’ as it is the sign of his election. 

‘‘But as I have already stated, the two words Jan and 
Belul are not in any case used together, neither are as a rule 
used without the addition of the word “ qhoj”’; it is thus 
clear that there is no foundation whatever for the statement 
that the name Prester John is derived from them, especially 
as there is no doubt that before entering Ethiopia Pedro de 
Covilhao wrote from Cairo to the King Dom Joao II that he 
had found Prester John, whom his Majesty had ordered him 
to seek, he did not invent the name, but applied that mentioned 
to him by the King, which he first heard in Portugal, to the 
Kmperor of Ethiopia on finding that he was a Christian, was 
in Holy Orders and carried a cross, which were more or less 
the particulars he had heard of Prester John of the Indias, 
whom he had come to seek. 

‘“* As we are treating the subject of the name Prester John, 
which has erroneously been given to the Emperor of the 
Abyssinians, it is advisable to state briefly that they call the 
King “‘ Nugue”’ and the Emperor “‘ Neguca Nagasta’’ which 
is equivalent to “‘ King of Kings”’, the Queen “‘ Neguesta ”’ 
and the Empress “‘ Negesta neguestat’’, ‘“‘ Queen of Queens’’, 

Another important passage on the same topic occurs in 
Paez? :— 

‘“As for the reason why in Europe we usually call the 
Emperor of Ethiopia Prester John, it may possibly be due 
to the fact that as the Emperor is usually a diacono, some 
Greeks call him Presbyter, and then adding to this the title 
of zan, which, as I have said, is given to the Emperor, they 
came to say Preste zan, and foreigners, who are often wont 
to corrupt names, accommodating them to their own language, 
thus called him Prester loam. This name Zan is of ancient 
usage in Ethiopia, for, in order to describe some of the 
offices still held by the descendants of those officials whom 
Solomon gave to his son Menelik, it is still employed ; for 
they speak of the officials of zan, as we should say officials 
of the Emperor. Thus, the master-of-the-horse of the 

a See Beccari< op. cit.,..vyol.il, py 72. 


192 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Emperor is called zan beleu, and the chief armourer is called 
zan aalami.” 

Now none of these statements contains the whole truth, 
and it is curious that neither the missionaries nor the 
Abyssinian envoys should have attempted a still more 
obvious explanation of the origin of the name. Almeida 
himself tells us that the Abyssinians called their Emperor 
jan, and that to jan, was added ghoj (anglice hoy), he also 
knew that zan hoy was the phrase used by the Amharas when 
addressing their Emperor. He must also have known, 
though he does not say so, that this vocative was also used 
when speaking of the Emperor. The Amharic word zan "H'1: 
is probably derived from the Ethiopian dayyant = a judge, 
and not from jan an elephant. In Ethiopic the common 
word for elephant is 7L. I think Almeida must have had 
in mind the Amharic zahhon. Zan hoy was still in common 
use down to the death of the late Emperor Menelik. 

Now it may be suggested that this king of Ethiopia was 
first spoken of by foreigners in Jerusalem and Alexandria 
as Presbyter, or Preste or Prete, that a need being felt for 
some fuller title, they inquired his title from the Abyssinians, 
and learned that they called him Zan hoy. This they added 
to Preste, and in the process converted it into Giannoi, and 
finally into Gianni. He is also spoken of as The Prester, and 
even in Ariosto’s day he was still known as Presto or 
Pretianni.| Even if this theory be incorrect, it is strange 
that it did not suggest itself to the Abyssinian envoys or to 
the Portuguese travellers and historians. 

Not until the Crusades came to an end were missionaries 
sent to Nubia and Ethiopia, for the Mamluks had blocked 
the road through Egypt, and when it was at last discovered 
that the real Prester John was an African king in Ethiopia, 
neither very powerful nor very rich, but at least a Christian, 
it took a long time for the legendary stories attaching to 
this name to die out. In 13816, however, two years before 
the departure of Oderic of Pordenone on his travels into 
Asia, eight Dominicans, sent by Pope John XXII, arrived 
in Abyssinia, and made a number of converts to Catholicism. 
Abyssinians even entered the Dominican Order, the most 


1 See Orlando Furioso: Canto xxxiii, 106: ‘‘ Gli diciam Presto o 
Pretianni noi.’ 


PRESTER JOHN 193 


notable being the famous Tekla Haymanot. Among the 
earliest true accounts of Prester John must be reckoned the 
story told in 1391 to King John I of Aragon by a priest 
who had spent several years at Prester John’s court.!. In 
1402 an Ethiopian Embassy under the Florentine Antonio 
Bartoli arrived in Venice. In 1408 some Ethiopian pilgrims 
came via Jerusalem to Bologna to visit Padua and Rome, 
and in 1427 there came to the court of Alphonso V of Aragon 
two ambassadors from Prester John, one a Christian and the 
other an “ infidel’’.2 Friar Jordanus (fourteenth century) 
places Prester John in Africa, while Fra Mauro (middle of 
the fifteenth century) in his map expressly identifies him 
with the King of Abyssinia. 

The Portuguese attempts to achieve the circumnavigation 
of Africa began in 1433, and in 1455 in a letter written in 
Portugal by the Genoese Uso Di Mare, who was mentioned 
above, we find the first allusion to the exact whereabouts 
of Prester John, which he declares to be about 300 leagues 
from Gambia, six days’ journey from the shore. In 1452 
we hear of Abyssinian ambassadors at Lisbon ; in 1481 there 
is another embassy in Rome, and at length in 1487 Covilham 
is sent by the King of Portugal to look for Prester John. 
Martin Behaim of Nuremberg in his map of 1492 mentions an 
Emperor of Abessinie, but he places Prester John in Cathaia, 
an error that almost certainly arose from his close dependence 
upon Marco Polo for his geographical information regarding 
Eastern Asia. 

The traditions regarding the sources of the Nile were 
already in the fifteenth century associated with the residence 
of Prester John. It was reported that the Nile came out 
of a great cavern, at the entrance of which Prester John had 
constructed two large towers joined by a large chain, so that 
no one might look into the cavern. There proceeded from 
within the cavern a very sweet song which made the hearer 
never wish to go away. If Prester John so desired, he could 

1 He first related his adventures to a certain Comte de Foix. See 
Antonio Rubiéd y Lluch. Documents per Vhistoria de la cultura catalana 
mig-eval. Barcelona, 1908. 

* The interview with the King took place at Valencia in the presence 
of Cardinal de Foix, papal legate, who reported the circumstances to 
Pope Martin V in the presence of a certain William Fillastre. See 
Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, 1842, p. 148. 

O 


194 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


make the river flow in another direction, and when travellers 
at last discovered where Prester John resided, some went 
so far as to maintain that the Sultan of Cairo paid annual 
tribute to him so that he might not change the course of the 
Nile. The Sultan, one writer tells us, allowed no Christian 
to proceed to India by the Red Sea, nor by the Nile towards 
Prester John lest these Christians should make a treaty 
with him by which the Nile should be diverted in its course 
away from Egypt. Finally, he says, the reason why Prester 
John does not do so is because of the large number of 
Christians who inhabit Egypt, who would as a consequence 
die of hunger. 

Before leaving thesubject of the African Prester John further 
brief reference must again be made to the first two missions 
that were sent to that country by the Portuguese, the one in 
1487 and the other in 1520. Pedro de Covilham after paying 
two visits to India eventually arrived in Abyssinia in 1490. 
Though he was never allowed to return to Portugal he sent 
many reports home to his king and the question of the 
Ethiopian Prester John was settled once and for all. The 
second mission, under Dom Rodrigo da Lima, who reached 
Abyssinia in 1520, was actually in response to a mission sent 
by the Queen Regent of Ethiopia under a certain Matheus, 
an Armenian, who was, as we saw above, the complaisant 
informant of Damido Goes. After a series of misadventures 
extending over two years, he finally reached Lisbon in 1514, 
The return mission took this same Matheus with it, but his 
ill-luck pursued him to the end, and he died a few days after 
he landed at Massowa. 

One of the results of da Lima’s mission, which spent five 
years in the suite of Prester John, was the compilation of 
those works on the History, Manners and Customs of Ethiopia 
from which we have so freely quoted. By the middle of the 
sixteenth century such men as Alvarez, Almeida and Paez 
had written more about Abyssinia and its history than was 
known of almost any Asiatic country at the period ; but the 
lack of recognition that their labours received still left 
Western Europe in ignorance of the facts, and it was not 
until the visit of the British traveller Bruce in the eighteenth 
century that the curtain was fully lifted from Prester John’s 
Kthiopian kingdom. 


CHAPTER X 


THE SEARCH FOR THE SEA ROUTE To INDIA, 
A.D. 1415-1460. 


By Professor EDGAR PresTAGE, M.A., D.Litt. 


A STUDY of the map of Portugal will suggest some of the 

causes that led her people to become navigators. 
The country possesses a long seaboard, a splendid natural 
harbour in Lisbon and a number of others, such as Oporto, 
Vianna and Setubal, which in the days of small ships proved 
adequate, while some of them could even shelter crusading 
fleets. On the north and east lies Spain, divided in the 
Middle Ages into three kingdoms, the largest of which, 
Castile, by her superior power prevented the Portuguese 
from expanding landward and obliged them to look to the 
ocean as a field of energy and profit. Though the Celts 
have never been seamen, the Celtic strain in the race provided 
the imagination necessary for the undertaking of great 
enterprises, while pluck and perseverance came from other 
sources, perhaps from the half-tamed Lusitanian stock 
and the Germanic invaders, for the Phcenician element was 
too small to have had much influence. 

We know little of the early maritime history of Portugal. 
Trading relations with the Northern countries and those of 
the Mediterranean seem to have been active in the first reigns 
of the Christian rulers of the country and Lisbon and Oporto 
were important commercial centres, as they could hardly fail 
to be in view of their geographical position. At the same time 
a royal navy was gradually developing. In his Chronicle 
of the first King Afonso Henriques, Duarte Galvam tells 
us how Dom Fuas Roupinho captured a fleet of Moorish 
galleys off Cape Espichel, seized others at Ceuta and later 
on how he fellin with fifty-four Moorish boats in the Straits of 
Gibraltar and was defeated and killed. Sancho I could send 


196 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


forty galleys to join the Crusading armada which took Silves, 
capital of the Algarve in 1189, while Lisbon arsenal dates from 
the reign of Sancho II, and in that of Afonso III it built 
warships for the Crown. King Dinis had the extensive 
pine forest of Leiria planted, and when the post of admiral, 
which he had created in 1307, became vacant, he sought a 
substitute from Genoa, then a leading naval power. His 
choice fell upon Manoel Pezagno, who in February, 1317 
became admiral of the Portuguese navy, and undertook that 
he and his successors would provide twenty Genoese skilled 
in navigation to command the galleys. Pezagno proved a 
competent organizer; he built ships, taught the Portuguese 
the art of warfare at sea, and freed the coast from Moorish 
pirates. 

In 1326 Afonso IV sent him on a diplomatic mission to our 
Edward II of England, to negotiate a marriage between his 
daughter and the future Edward III, and in 1337 he 
commanded a large fleet which was defeated by the Castilians 
off Cape St. Vincent. The admiral had brought over to 
Portugal members of leading Genoese families to serve in the 
navy, and the first two Portuguese ocean voyages of which we 
have a record were probably carried out under their auspices. 
Their destination was the Canaries, which the Genoese 
Malocello had visited in 1270. The date of the first voyage 
is uncertain, but as we know that it preceded the wars with 
Castile and the Moors, it must have been in or before 13386. 
The second, related by the poet Boccaccio from letters 
written by Florentine merchants at Seville, took place in 
1341. The expedition consisted of two vessels furnished 
by Afonso IV and a smaller ship manned by Portuguese, 
Italians and Castilians; they left Lisbon on July Ist, and 
returned in November, bringing with them four natives, 
skins, dyewood and a stone idol. Various islands were 
touched at; the first, probably Fuerteventura, estimated 
to be 150 miles in circumference, they found to be barren 
and inhabited by naked savages and goats ; the next, perhaps 
Grand Canary, seemed even larger and was more populous ; 
the natives lived in houses, possessed palm and fig-trees 
and cultivated vegetable gardens. Other islands were 
visited and more were seen; on one they saw a mountain, 
supposed to be 30,000 feet high. Strange to say, the islanders 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 197 


appeared to have no boats. The delineation of the Fortunate 
Islands, as the Canaries were then called, on the Laurentian 
Portolano of 1351 may be due to this last expedition, which 
was not followed up, because the King of Portugal had 
other commitments, and perhaps also because in the result 
it only just paid its expenses. It had, however, apparently 
been undertaken for the purpose of exploration and not 
merely as a mercantile venture. 

According to the doctrine received in the Middle Ages, 
the Popes had power to dispose of newly found lands, and 
on November 15th, 1344, Don Luis de la Cerda, a great 
grandson of Afonso X of Castile and Admiral of France, 
obtained from Clement VI a grant of the Canaries in fief to 
the Apostolic See under an annual tribute of 400 gold florins. 
The Pontiff, while reserving the rights of third parties, wrote 
to various monarchs, asking them to assist the Prince, among 
them to Afonso IV. In his reply, dated February 12th, 
1345, the King of Portugal reminded Clement that his subjects 
had been the first to discover the islands, which were nearer 
to his realm than to any other and that he had arranged to 
send a further expedition to conquer them before he was 
prevented by wars with his neighbours. It seemed, therefore, 
that he, rather than any other king, ought to be allowed to 
conclude the business he had began ; nevertheless he would 
bow to the Pope’s decision, but in view of his own needs the 
only assistance he could give to his relative Don Luis would 
be in the form of foodstuffs. Warious attempts to which I 
shall refer later were made by the Portuguese in the fifteenth 
century to obtain possession of the Canaries, but the claims 
of Castile finally prevailed. 

The last years of Afonso IV were disturbed by the revolt 
of his son and heir Peter, in consequence of the execution 
by royal order of the latter’s mistress D. Ignez de Castro ; 
internal questions occupied the attention of Peter during 
his reign of ten years, while Ferdinand, who succeeded to the 
throne in 1867, involved himself in three wars with Castile. 
Though we have no record of ocean voyages during the last 
half of the fourteenth century, it would be rash to conclude 
that none took place. If their results proved disappointing 
the Chroniclers might well omit to register them, but unless 
the voyages continued, it is difficult to explain the activity 


198 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


displayed in that sphere from the second decade of the 
fifteenth century onwards, and the enthusiasm with which 
Prince Henry devoted himself to the work of discovery, 
as soon as he grew up, becomes even more remarkable. 
Though the naval operations undertaken by Ferdinand were 
as unsuccessful as the military, he did more by his legislation 
than any of his predecessors to develop Portuguese sea power. 

Traders of various nations had then establishments in 
Lisbon, which was a free port, and according to the historian 
Fernam Lopes, as many as 400 or 500 merchant ships often 
lay before the city at one time, while 100 or 150 loaded 
salt and wine at Sacavem and Montijo in the outskirts. As 
many of these vessels, if not most, belonged to foreigners, the 
King decreed a series of protective measures to develop the 
mercantile marine. He encouraged shipbuilding by 
supplying wood gratis from the royal forests, and allowing 
other materials to be imported duty free; he reduced the 
imposts on merchandise carried in the first voyage of a new 
vessel, he gave owners a partial exemption from military 
service ; lastly he instituted a register and statistics of shipping 
and a system of marine insurance on co-operative lines. 
These measures must have contributed in no small degree to 
render possible the voyages of exploration in the following 
century. 

On 6th April, 1885 the Cortes of Coimbra bestowed the 
crown on John I, who thus became founder of the great 
dynasty of Aviz. On 9th May, 1386 the treaty of Windsor 
was signed between Portugal and England, and on 2nd 
February, 1887, the King married Philippa, daughter of John 
of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. From this marriage sprang 
five sons, justly called by Camoées “‘ altos Infantes”’; the 
third of them, Henry, named by us the Navigator,! half an 
Englishman by blood and more than half in character, though 
by physiognomy he strikes us as purely Portuguese,? was 
born on Ash Wednesday, 4th March, 1394. 

His mother, God-fearing, determined and imbued with a 
high sense of duty, enforced strict morality on the Court and 


1 Notwithstanding this title bestowed on him in modern times by 
Englishmen, Henry’s only personal voyages were to Ceuta and Tangier 
and Alcacer. 

2 See below, p. 200. 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 199 


brought up her sons in accordance with her ideals ; she took 
care that in addition to bodily training they should receive 
a clerkly education, with the result that they became men of 
action and students at the same time, and two of them, like 
their father, wrote learned books. We do not know when 
Henry first turned his attention to the sea, but Barros gives 
us to understand that even before the conquest of Ceuta in 
1415 he sent out ships to explore down the west coast of 
Africa, and Faria e Sousa says that the voyages began in 1412 
and that in this year the Portuguese reached Cape Bojador, 
the “ bulging”? Cape, 60 leagues beyond Cape Non. The 
latter historian was only born in 1590 and cannot always be 
relied upon, but there is reason to think that in the course 
of the fourteenth century the Portuguese had found Madeira 
and some of the Azores, as well as the Canaries. According 
to Diogo Gomes, who belonged to Henry’s household, a 
certain D. John de Castro was captain of a fleet that the 
Prince fitted out in 1415, and Zurara! says that from the 
time Ceuta was taken, the Prince always had ships at sea 
to guard against Moorish pirates, so that the fear of them 
kept in security the shores of the Peninsula and the merchants 
who traded between East and West. 

Gomes adds that in 1416 Henry sent down the coast beyond 
the Canaries a noble kight Goncalo Velho to find out the 
reason of the currents there, and that this man afterwards 
reached a spot called Terra Alta, but the best evidence shows 
that Cape Bojador was not passed until much later. The 
Prince’s continuous exploring activities began after the 
capture of Ceuta at which he won his spurs. In that town, 
to the knowledge he had already acquired at home and from 
books about the lands to the South, he added information 
derived from men who had visited them. Moors told him of 
the journeys of traders from the Mediterranean coast to 
Timbuktu and Cantor on the Gambia, and of the regions as 
far as Guinea. The notices he received from one traveller 
and another were compared and checked with happy results, 
for having ascertained the existence of some tall palms 
near the mouth of the Senegal, he was able to guide the 
caravels he sent out to find that river many years after. 


1 Chronicle of Guinea, ed. Beazley and Prestage (Hakluyt Society, 
London, 1896), cap. 5. 


200 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


In order the better to supervise the preparation of the 
expeditions which he resolved to dispatch regularly on a 
preconceived plan, he retired from Court and fixed his abode 
in the Algarve, of which he had been appointed Governor, 
and finally at Sagres near St. Vincent, where he built a small 
town called Villa do Infante. Its geographical. position 
and the fact that ships put in to refit, made it an ideal base 
of operations ; there, immersed in the study of mathematics 
and cosmography, he passed his years, varied by occasional 
visits to Court and to other parts of the Kingdom ; there he 
selected his captains and had his mariners instructed. 

Before we consider the motives that determined his life 
work and the results he achieved it will be well to have in 
mind the appearance and character of a man, one of the 
greatest Portugal has produced, and, as the founder of 
continuous modern discovery, a world figure. For the first 
we possess ‘his portrait in one of the triptychs painted by 
Nuno Goncalves about 1459 for the altar of St. Vincent in 
Lisbon Cathedral, and now in the Museum of Ancient Art 
in that city. Though very like the earlier miniature in the 
Paris copy of the Chronicle of Guinea, the expression of the 
face is different; the Prince has a softer, even a dreamy 
look, as of one looking beyond the present ; we see no longer 
the practical man of business and the stern moralist, but the 
idealist who carried out the voyages for the spread of 
knowledge and of the Faith.1 We learn something about his 
character from his friend Zurara and though the Chronicler 
wrote as a panegyrist, his substantial truthfulness has 
never been successfully impugned ; Oliveira Martins, Henry’s 
hardest critic, fails to convince us that the Prince selfishly 
sacrificed his brothers in the pursuit of his ends, though 
as an idealist he seemed at times merciless. This is what 
Zurara says and Barros confirms: ‘‘The noble Prince was 
of a good height and broad frame, big and strong of limb, 
the hair of his head somewhat erect, his colour naturally 
fair, but by constant toil and exposure it had become dark. 
His expression at first sight inspired fear in those who did 
not know him and when wroth, though such times were 


1 See my article in The Burlington Magazine for September, Ig1o, 
with reproductions of the painting and Dr. José de Figueiredo, O Pintor 
Nuno Goncalves (Lisbon, 1910), p. 15. 


i ei 








THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 201 


rare, his countenance was harsh. He possessed strength of 
heart and keenness of mind to a very excellent degree, and he 
was beyond comparison ambitious of achieving great and 
lofty deeds. Neither lewdness nor avarice ever found a home 
in his breast, for as to the former he was so restrained that 
he passed all his life in purest chastity, and as a virgin the 
earth received him again at his death to herself ...1 His 
palace was a school of hospitality for the good and high born 
of the realm and still more for strangers, and the fame of it 
caused him a great increase of expense, for commonly there 
were found in his presence men from various nations, so 
different from our own that it was a marvel to wellnigh 
all our people; and none of that multitude could go away 
without some guerdon from the Prince. All his days he 
spent in the greatest toil, for of a surety among the nations of 
mankind no man existed who was a sterner master to himself. 
It would.be hard to tell how many nights he passed in which 
his eyes knew no sleep ; and his body was so transformed by 
abstinence that it seemed as if Dom Henry had made its 
nature to be different from that of others. . . . The Prince 
was a man of great wisdom and authority, very discreet and 
of good memory, but in some matters a little tardy, whether 
it was from the influence of the phlegm in his nature? or 
from the choice of his will, directed to some certain end not 
known to men. His bearing was calm and dignified, his 
speech and address gentle. . . . Never was hatred known in 
him, nor ill-will towards any man, however great the wrong 
done him; and so great was his benignity in this respect — 
that wise-acres reproached him as wanting in distributive 
justice. And this they said because he left unpunished 
some of his servants who deserted him at the siege of Tangier 
. not only becoming reconciled to them, but even granting 
them honourable advancement over others who had served 
him well... and this is the only shortcoming of his I 
have to record. He ever showed great devotion to the public 
affairs of this Kingdom... and keenly enjoyed the labour 
of arms, especially against the enemies of the Holy Faith, 


1 This detail is registered by Diogo Gomes, who was with Henry 
when he died; he says that a hair shirt was found on the Prince’s 
body. 

2 Doubtless inherited from his English forbears. 


202 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


while he desired peace with all Christians; . . . a _ base 
or unchaste word was never heard to issue from his 
mouth. ... His heart. never knew what fear was, save 
the fear of sin.” ! 

Cadamosto, a Venetian and thus a foreigner, is no less eulo- 
gistic ; he calls Henry the most accomplished Prince of his time, 
the least of whose virtues would suffice to immortalize another. 
He ascribes Henry’s steadfastness in pursuing his objects 
under great difficulties to the confidence his great learning 
gave him. This was written in Venice after the 
Prince’s death, and may fairly be considered an impartial 
testimony. 

According to Zurara, the first object Henry set before 
himself was the discovery of Guinea, which explains the 
title bestowed on the Chronicle. Five reasons moved him 
thereto; he desired (1) to obtain knowledge of the lands 
beyond Cape Bojador, (2) to establish trading relations with 
any Christians who might live there, (3) to ascertain the 
extent of the Muhammadan power in Africa, (4) to find a 
Christian King who would help him to fight the Infidel, and 
(5) to spread the Christian Faith. His ends were thus 
scientific, commercial, political and religious; it is worthy 
of note that Zurara puts the scientific first. But if the 
religious comes last, it was not the least to weigh with Henry. 
In his Chronicle of the capture of Ceuta Zurara says that he 
learned to hate the Infidel in his mother’s womb, moreover 
as governor of the Order of Christ he had a positive obligation 
to combat the foes of the Cross, and the traditions of his 
family and country impelled him thereto; he proved his 
crusading zeal at Ceuta and in the attempt on Tangier and 
he showed solicitude for the conversion of the captives that 
his men brought home. 

The inception of the expeditions of discovery is described 
by Duarte Pacheco in Esmeraldo and by Barros in his Asia ; 
one night the Prince lay sleepless in bed, pondering over 
his schemes, and at last, as if seized by a sudden fury, he 
leapt up, called his servants and ordered some ships to be 
made ready at once for a voyage southwards along the coast 
of Marocco. All were astonished and attributed this outburst 
to a divine revelation. Damiio de Goes, a more critical 


1 V. ui supra. 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 203 


historian than Pacheco or Barros,! refers to this story in 
his Chronicle of Prince John but rejects it ; he explicitly states 
that Henry had in view the finding of the Indies and sets out 
the reasons for his belief in its feasibility. The accounts of 
Herodotus and other ancient writers convinced him that India 
had been reached by the circumnavigation of-Africa and this 
certainty (the word Goes uses), together with the information 
he derived from natives well up in African affairs, led him to 
order the refinding of the forgotten route. 

At least one expedition had gone out in the Middle Ages to 
find a sea way to the East, that of the Genoese Doria and 
Vivaldo in 1291, so that the attempt was no novelty, even 
apart from the classical voyages known to the Prince. He 
had certainly studied the works of ancient and medieval 
geographers cited by Zurara and from them and especially 
from Marco Polo must have drawn inspiration. The 
abundance and precision of the data he had collected account 
for the persistence he showed, and for his refusal to be 
daunted by failures, heavy expense, and hostile criticism. 

The enterprise may have seemed to him all the more 
feasible because he could have no accurate idea of the distance, 
since according to many cartographers Africa was a peninsula 
about half its actual size, that is to say, the Southern coast 
of Guinea continued directly to the Indian Ocean. Even 
in the Laurentian Portolano of 1851, the best medieval map 
of the dark continent, the latter is shown with a short leg. 
Henry knew that caravans going across the Sahara had long 
traded with the Guinea coast, so that if his ships could 
reach it, they would be well on the way to the East 
and might hope to find Prester John and secure his 
assistance. 

In view of a discovery made some years ago, we can no 
longer consider hyperbolical the passage in Cap. 2 of the 
Chronicle of Guinea in which Zurara states that inhabitants 
of the greater and lesser India, that is Indians proper and 
Abyssinians, visited Portugal and received MHenry’s 
hospitality, for a document published in part by Senhor 

1 Vignaud says that there are only three first hand authorities as to 
the intentions and acts of Prince Henry, Zurara, Gomes and Barros ; 
but he should add Goes, if he includes’ Barros, for they were 


contemporaries. Histoive Critique de la grande enterprise de Christophe 
Colomb (Paris 1911), vol. i, cap. 4. 


204 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Pedro d’ Azevedo shows that an ambassador of Prester John 
was in Lisbon in 1452.1 

The presence of this man in Portugal suggests that the 
Prince had previously opened up relations with Abyssinia 
and perhaps had sent to fetch him from Italy. If so, this 
would explain Zurara’s statement that Indians travelled 
in the Infant’s ships.2. M. de la Ronciére records an embassy 
from the same country to the Pope and the King of Aragon 
in 1450.3 

Before describing the maritime expeditions made under 
Henry’s auspices, it is natural to enquire how far their results 
may have been anticipated. The undoubted pre-Henrician 
voyages down the coast of Africa are very few. The 
Phoenicians sent by Pharaoh Necho may have rounded the 
Cape of Good Hope, but Hanno probably got no further 
than Sierra Leone, while the Genoese Malocello only reached 
the Canaries. Doria and Vivaldo disappeared, so that it is 
impossible to fix their furthest south, while the voyages 
of the men of Dieppe in the fourteenth century are certainly 
not proven, the evidence for them being too late. 

As has been already remarked, Henry’s continued and 
systematic explorations began only after the capture of 
Ceuta, at which time he had attained the age of twenty-one. 
In 1419 Joaio Gongalves Zarco and Tristam Vaz Teixeira, 
knights of his household, seeing their master’s longing to 
discover Guinea, offered their services and went as far south 
as possible, but were driven back by a storm and found the 
island of Porto Santo. In the following year they returned 
and in the words of Zurara “ passed over to Madeira’’, 
which strengthens the view that the islands were already 
known to the Portuguese as they were to others, for the 
group appears on fourteenth century maps. The story of the 
discovery by the Englishman Robert Machin, popularized by 
D. Francisco Manuel in his Epanaphoras, has no foundation. 

From 1422 at least and probably earlier, the Prince 
despatched yearly expeditions of one or two ships down the 


1 See his note in the Boletim da Classe de Letras of the Lisbon Academy 
of Sciences, vol. xiii, p. 525. 

* In the English version of the Chronicle of Guinea, chapter 2, 
“ passing ’’ is a mis-translation for ‘‘ passages ”’ (vol. i, p. 7, bottom). 

8 Ch. de la Ronciére, La Découverte del’ Afrique au moyen age (Cairo, 
1925), vol. ii, p. 119. 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 205 


coast, for when Bojador was finally passed, we are told that 
twelve years had been spent in the attempt. The fact that 
it ran out far into the ocean, and the shoals and currents 
that surrounded it, terrified the mariners, who were 
accustomed to hug the shore and dared not sail far enough 
from land to get into deep water and avoid them. They 
were convinced that the ocean beyond the Cape was 
unnavigable ; moreover they shared the prevalent belief 
that life could not be sustained in the torrid zone. 

Neither these fears, nor general condemnation of the 
business as dangerous and unprofitable, moved Henry, 
and in 1433 he sent out his squire Gil Eannes with orders 
to double Bojador. This man did no better than the others, 
but having been despatched again in the following year for 
the same purpose, he succeeded. Contemporaries regarded 
the feat as equal to one of the labours of Hercules, and a 
modern historian has pronounced it greater than that of 
Bartholomew Dias in passing the Cape of Storms. The 
glory of Gil Eannes lay not in penetrating some leagues 
further south, but in overcoming the obstacles which had 
daunted his predecessors and destroying the conviction that 
Bojador was the limit of possible navigation. 

The French proverb—“ the first step is the most difficult ”’ 
—proved true once more, for now one voyage after another 
resulted in progress. Gil Eannes went out again the year 
following with Baldaya, Henry’s cupbearer, and sailed 150 
miles beyond the Cape, now shorn of its terrors, to the Angra 
dos Ruivos, while in a subsequent voyage the latter reached 
the Rio do Ouro, 240 miles to the south, and in 1436 he 
discovered the Porto do Galé, 50 miles further on. 

So far the expeditions had been an exclusive venture of the 
Prince,! and financed by his own resources and those of the 
Order of Christ, so that when he was unable to attend to 
them, they ceased. This respite happened from 1437 to 
1440, for in those years occurred his disastrous attempt against 
Tangier, the death of his brother King Edward, and political 
troubles which kept him fully occupied. 

He was anxious to obtain from the natives information 
about the lands his caravels had been skirting, and when more 


1 Duarte Pacheco speaks of him as “ the first inventor of this 
navigation and discovery.’’ Esmeraldo, bk. ili, cap. 5. 


206 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


peaceful conditions prevailed at home and the expeditions 
recommenced in 1441, he ordered his captains to try and take 
some captives. His wish was gratified by Antam Goncalves 
who brought back ten Azenegues, among them a chief Adahu, 
while Nuno Tristam, who had assisted in the capture, went on 
to Cape Branco. JDesirous of returning to his country, 
Adahu promised that five or six Moors would be given in 
exchange for him, and Gongalves, sailing from Lisbon this 
time and accompanied by one Balthazar, a knight of the 
household of the Emperor, obtained ten negroes, gold dust and 
ostrich eggs. In 1448 Nuno Tristam made a further advance 
to Arguim Bay and took more natives. The Prince welcomed 
them because he hoped they would serve as guides and 
interpreters and assist in the propagation of Christianity, 
but to the people they meant cheap labour and profit, hence 
slave raids became a feature of succeeding expeditions. 
Public opinion now turned in Henry’s favour, and private 
adventurers came forward and undertook voyages on their 
own account with his consent. The merchants and mariners 
of Lisbon and Lagos were foremost in this, and the latter 
formed a company for which Lancarote Pessanha, the 
receiver of customs, took out a fleet of six caravels and secured 
235 natives. It is right to say that according to Zurara 
masters treated the captives like their other servants; the 
younger were taught trades, freed and married to Portuguese 
women. Nearly all became Christians and were absorbed 
into the white population. The Portuguese had no 
repugnance to black blood, so that slavery with them rarely 
assumed the harsh aspect it wore when practised by the races 
of Northern Europe. 

In 1444 Nuno Tristam and others reached the Senegal, 
in the next year Dinis Dias rounded Cape Verde, and John 
Fernandes spent seven months among the natives of the 
Arguim coast and brought back the first reliable account 
of part of the interior ; in 1446 he made a further advance, 
and in the opinion of the Visconde de Santarem passed Cape 
Verga, receiving the reward of 100 doubloons from Henry 
and the same amount from Peter, then Regent.1 The sandy, 
sterile, almost uninhabited regions had been left far behind ; 
the navigators were now coasting a land covered with palm 

1 Chronicle of Guinea, vol. ii, p. 349. 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 207 


trees and verdure and well peopled, whose products rewarded 
their efforts. But there was a dark side; the raids had 
aroused the hostility of the natives, and in 1445 and 1446 
three of the leaders perished at their hands. It is not 
surprising, for Zurara tells us that by 1448 the Portuguese 
had carried off 927 captives. In 1445 twenty-five caravels 
sailed to the West African Coast, including fourteen which 
left Lagos under Lancarote Pessanha to avenge the death of 
Gongalo de Sintra the previous year ; and when passing the 
Magdalen Islands off Cape Verde they saw the arms of the 
Prince cut on trees, with his device Talant de bien faire. 

By 1446 no less than 51 caravels had left Portugal, 
penetrating 450 leagues beyond Cape Bojador, and it was 
found that the coast went south-east with many promontories, 
and the Prince had it inserted in his charts. Zurara remarks 
that what had previously been shown on the mappa mundi 
with respect to this coast had only been depicted at hazard. 
The result of the expeditions are shown in the map of Andrea 
Bianco, dated London 1448. In 1447 one of the Prince’s 
captains opened up relations with the city of Messa in 
Marocco, and obtained a lion, which he sent to an old servant 
of his, resident in Galway. The fame of the discoveries had 
spread over Europe, and men in search of adventure and 
honour came from various countries to take part in them. 
Among these was a Danish noble Vallarte, who in 1448 obtained 
from Henry a caravel to take him to “ Blackland ”’, where he 
lost his life. This is the last expedition mentioned by Zurara, 
for though he wrote his Chronicle in 1453, he did not continue 
the record beyond 1448, because trade and peaceful inter- 
course with natives had less interest for him than deeds of 
arms. From that year to 1460 our information is meagre ; 
almost the only voyages we know of are two of Cadamosto, 
a Venetian seaman in Henry’s service, already mentioned, 
who in 1455 and 1457 explored the course of the Gambia 
and Senegal, and discovered the Cape Verde islands, and 
two voyages of Diogo Gomes in 1458 and 1460. Sierra Leone 
had probably not been attained in the Prince’s lifetime.! 


1 The southern limit of the Henrician explorations is an unsolved 
problem. His biographers have not discussed it adequately, nor have 
they presented us with a satisfactory map showing the places found with 
the respective dates. 


208 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For forty years of effort the result may appear small, but 
the impetus he had given was never lost, and though exploring 
expeditions became less frequent and regular, the advance 
that each made was incomparably greater. 

Twenty-two years after his death Diogo Cao, who had been 
brought up in his household, discovered the Congo, five years 
later Bartholomew Dias, probably the son of Dinis Dias, 
one of his captains, reached the southernmost point of the 
African continent, and in 1498, after a voyage longer than 
man had hitherto achieved, Vasco da Gama anchored off 
Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, thus realizing at 
length the union of West and East, for which the Prince 
had striven. 

The coast voyages have been described; it remains to 
consider those in what Zurara calls the “‘ ocean sea’. Some 
of the Azores are marked in the Medicean Portolano of 1351, 
and it is possible that the group was found by Portuguese 
vessels under Genoese pilots, but we have no record of any 
visit before Henry sent Gongalo Velho to look for them in 
1431 or 1432. By 1439 seven were known, and Afonso V 
gave the Prince leave to colonize them ; the first settlers 
were Portuguese and Flemings, hence they appear under the 
name of the ‘‘ Flemish islands ’”’ in some maps. 

It is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to 
make full, or even very definite, statements about the expedi- 
tions to the West in Henry’s lifetime. After the discovery 
of the Azores, it was natural that mariners should seek for 
other lands in that direction, and in 1452, Diogo de Teive and 
Pedro Velasco sailed 150 leagues south-west of Fayal in 
search of Antilia. Legends of lost islands existed, and so 
fixed was the belief in them that men asked for and obtained 
grants of what they hoped to find, as witness the con- 
cession made in 1457 by King Afonso V to his brother 
Ferdinand. 

Antonio Galvam mentions a voyage of 1447, and an 
inscription in the 1448 map of Andrea Bianco has convinced 
some geographers that the north-east corner of Brazil was 
found about that time, but though this is doubtful, the 
protest of King John II against the line of demarcation, 
established by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, and the consent 
of Spain to its removal westward by the Treaty of 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 209 


Tordesillas in 1494,! so as in fact to include Brazil in the 
Portuguese sphere, suggest an earlier knowledge of that 
country. 

In 1500 the pilots of Alvarez Cabral’s expedition recognized 
the Terra de Santa Cruz (i.e. Northern Brazil) as the same 
land they had seen marked on an old map belonging to Pero 
Vaz Bisagudo,? and since only the Portuguese navigated the 
Western Atlantic, we may conclude that it had been reached 
many years before that date and previous to the expedition 
sent by King Manoel I to explore those seas in 1498, which is 
recorded by Duarte Pacheco. Robert Thorne, writing in 1527, 
dates the discovery of what we now call Brazil before 1494. 
That the Western Continent was believed, if not actually 
known, to exist, is clear from a remarkable assertion of Las 
Casas; he declares that Columbus on his third voyage 
planned to sail south from the Cape Verde islands because 
he wanted to ascertain if the King of Portugal was wrong 
when he affirmed that there was terra firma in_ that 
direction. 

It is possible that when Prince Henry found the African 
route to the East to be longer than he had anticipated, he 
thought of reaching it by the north-west passage; at any 
rate, as Dr. Sofus Larsen has recently sought to show, 
Christian I of Denmark seems to have sent out an expedition 
of Danes with Portuguese emissaries aboard in 1472-3, which 
coasted along a continental shore in the region of what we © 
now know as the St. Lawrence. The suggestion of the expedi- 
tion is said to have come from Afonso V of Portugal, but 
as he generally had little interest in the work of discovery, 
he may have inherited the idea from his uncle, who 


1 The Bull and Treaty are in Alguns Documentos do Archivo nacional 
acerca das navigacgoes e conquistas portuguesas (Lisbon, 1892), pp. 65 
and69. Translated in F. C. Davenport, European Treaties bearing on 
U.S.A. (Washington, 1917), i, 61 sqq. 

2 Alguns Documentos, p. 122. 

8’ Thorne mentions this in connexion with the Tordesillas Agreement 
of 1494, “‘ When this aforesaid consent of the division of the world was 
agreed of betweene them (i.e. the Kings of Spain and Portugal) the King 
of Portugal had already discovered certaine Islands that lie over 
against Cape Verde, and also certaine part of the maine land of India 
toward the South, from whence he fette Brasill, and called it the land 
of Brasil. So that for all that should come in his terme and limites, he 
took 370 leagues beyond Cape Verde.” MHakluyt’s Voyages (Everyman 
€dn,), 1, 226. 


E 


210 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


certainly maintained relations with his kinsmen, the Danish 
Kings. 

From what has gone before, it will be seen that our informa- 
tion about the voyages of the fifteenth century, whether those 
made under Henry’s auspices, or private ventures, is 
incomplete, and often confused. In a remarkable study in 
the review Lusitania for January, 1924, Dr. Jaime 
Cortesdo, director of the Lisbon National Library, contends 
that the monopoly aimed at by the Portuguese led them to 
conceal facts which might provoke international complications 
or assist their rivals. In 1443, a royal decree provided that 
no one should sail beyond Cape Bojador without Henry’s 
leave, and that those who infringed this law should suffer 
confiscation of their vessels and cargoes, but the Holy See 
alone could render the monopoly effective against foreigners, 
and the Prince in his capacity as Crusader and missionary 
of Christianity and Empire, obtained from successive Popes 
exclusive rights for Portugal over the lands already dis- 
covered or to be discovered to the South. Protests came from 
Castile, whose rulers considered North-West Africa as part of 
their inheritance by virtue of their descent from the old 
Gothic sovereigns, and in addition to the Canaries, we find 
them claiming Guinea after Henry’s seamen had penetrated 
there. The dispute lasted half a century, and provoked 
incidents which, had Castile been in a position to undertake 
it, might have led to war with Portugal. 

Reference has already been made to the Papal grant of 
the Canaries in 1844 to D. Luis de la Cerda; he seems to 
have made no attempt to act upon it, but in 1402 and the 
following years the Normans Jean de Bethencourt and 
Gadifer de la Salle established Christian colonies in some of 
the islands, doing homage for them to the King of Castile, 
who reserved his supreme dominion; thus when Henry 
initiated voyages down the African coast, he found a foreign 
power on the flank. It was necessary for the full success 
of his policy of Portuguese expansion at all costs to obtain 
possession of the islands, which his Castilian rivals might 


1 Boletim da Classe das Letvas of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, vol. 
Xv, p. 214. This isa brief summary of Dr. Larsen’s conclusions. His 
argument is fully set forth in Sofus Larsen, The Discovery of North 
America twenty years before Columbus (Copenhagen—London, 1925). 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 211 


use asa base from which to push out towards the coveted 
goal of Guinea. 

In the long and complicated struggle between the two 
powers that ensued, we have the first of the contests for 
possessions beyond the sea that have marked the succeeding 
centuries. Every weapon, naval, military and diplomatic 
was employed, and the story deserves study in much greater 
detail than it has yet received. In 1425 the Prince sent an 
expedition under D. Fernando de Castro to conquer the 
islands, but the effort failed, and in the following year King 
John of Castile despatched an embassy led by the Bishop 
of Burgos to Portugal to make formal assertion of his prior 
claims to the Archipelago. Henry endeavoured to induce 
the King to relinquish these, but meeting with a refusal, 
he determined to secure an overriding grant from the over- 
lord of the islands, Pope Eugenius IV. In 1485 he succeeded 
in this, but the day of papal pre-eminence in international 
affairs was past; the Great Schism with Popes and Anti-Popes 
bidding against one another for the support of rival powers 
was hardly healed, and Eugenius IV himself was already in 
danger of the summons to account for his actions before a 
Council of the Church that overtook him four years later. 
King John protested violently against the Pope’s infringement 
of his rights, and by his orders the Bishop of Burgos raised 
the question of ownership at the Council of Basel. The 
Pope hesitated to decide definitely between the two powers, 
but admonished the King of Portugal to do nothing to the 
prejudice of the King of Castile. This did not satisfy Henry, 
and in 1487 he made his attack on Tangier, his object being, 
as Dr. Corteséo thinks, to anticipate Castile by securing 
this important base and to assert the rights of Portugal 
to the conquest of North Africa. Ill-success did not daunt 
him, it only led him to change his methods, and he made 
further attempts to obtain the Canaries by negotiation. 
Though his diplomatic efforts had no result, he obtained 
in 1446 from his brother, the Regent Peter, a decree that no 
ships were to go to the islands without his leave, and 
in 1447 he bestowed the captaincy of the Island of 
Lanzarote on Antam Goncalves. Not content with thus 
asserting and exercising rights of ownership, he allowed 
and probably encouraged attacks in 1450, 1451, and 


212 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


1453 on the islands which did not recognize Portuguese 
authority. 

All this time the Castilians persisted in sending ships to 
trade down the African coast, and in 1452 some caravels of 
Seville returning from Guinea were met by Palenco, a 
celebrated Portuguese sea-rover, who captured one, and 
imprisoned the crew, while a Genoese merchant found on 
board had his hands cut off. King John addressed two 
letters to King Afonso V, dated May 25th, 1452, and April 
10th, 1454, describing and protesting against these hostile 
acts and holding Henry responsible for them, and the long 
dispute was not settled until1480. The Treaty of Alcagovas, 
signed on March 6th of that year, allotted the Canaries to 
Castile and North Africa, Guinea and the islands in the ocean 
to the south to Portugal.1 This secured the monopoly she 
had worked for, because so long as she held the seas and 
lands adjacent to the Canaries the possession of the latter 
by another power was immaterial, nevertheless she would 
not rely altogether on written agreements, and on April 
6th, 1480, Afonso V signed a decree ordering that the crews 
of any foreign vessels found in the Portuguese zone of 
navigation should be thrown into the sea.2_ Moreover 
to remove from Castile the temptation to infringe the Treaty, 
a policy of secrecy was adopted, which included the suppression 
of information that might serve competitors, and at the 
same time measures were taken to find out foreign plans 
and the title deeds relating to the claims of rivals. It 
was King John II who fully developed the policy of secrecy, 
but even in Henry’s lifetime Afonso V had a Castilian in 
his service who acted as “‘ reader of the Chronicles and books 
of Castile ”’. 

The strange silence preserved by Portuguese Chronicles of 
the fifteenth century about the discoveries is thus explicable. 
When Barros came to write of them, he could find no complete 
copy of Zurara’s Chronicle of Guinea, and he declares that 
more discoveries were made in the reign of Afonso V than those 


1 As the Treaty says nothing of the East Indies, Vignaud argues 
that the Portuguese, even as late as this, had no intention of penetrating 
there. Infact the Treaty only dealt with disputed territories, and there 
was no reason why it should mention India. 

2 Alguns Documentos, p. 45. 











THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 213 


he relates.1. As Dr. Cortesao says, it is not likely that the 
King would forget to have the voyages after 1448 recorded, 
when he commissioned Zurara to write the achievements 
of the Menezes family in Africa. Damiao de Goes states 
that in his time histories which formerly existed had 
vanished; he notes that the Chronicle of Afonso V by 
Ruy de Pina contained only one chapter about the voyages, 
that of King Duarte by the same author said nothing on 
the subject, while there was no Chronicle at all covering 
the latter part of the reign of John I, the beginning of the 
period of discovery. Goes does not mention the work of 
Cerveira from which Zurara drew, so that it had evidently 
disappeared also.2, Pina composed in the sixteenth century 
the Chronicles of the Kings of the preceding century, using 
the works of his predecessors, but he omitted to speak of 
the most important event and chief glory of the age, the 
voyages and discoveries. Nothing but the official policy 
of secrecy can account for his silence; as royal Chronicler he 
must have acted under orders, for otherwise he would not 
have dared to leave out notable achievements in the recording 
of which many persons then living had an interest. The 
disappearance of the earlier and more complete books can 
only be attributed to the policy of secrecy ; they were almost 
certainly destroyed. 

Even the Chronicle of Guinea has been tampered with 
and truncated, as an examination of the two existing MSS. 
proves, and we have hardly any information about the 
Atlantic voyages to the West in the last half of the fifteenth 
century, though we know that some were made. Of this 
same Chronicle Pina only used enough to form one chapter. 
Now if, when the discoveries were in their infancy and their 
great development could not be foreseen, Zurara had been 
employed to record them, and if Cerveira had related them 
even more minutely, how came it that they were apparently 
treated as of less importance when they had transformed 
the face of the world ? There seems to be but one answer, 
that suggested by Dr. Cortesio. It is only by chance that 
we have lately learnt that an ambassador of Prester John 


1 Asia.. Decad.i, bk, ii, cap. 2. 

2 Vignaud is mistaken in saying that Barros saw Cerveira’s book ; 
what he saw were letters of his written from Benin. Decad i, bk. ii, 
cap. I. 


214 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


visited Lisbon eight years before Henry’s death, and we 
cannot help wondering what other important finds may be 
awaiting students among the ancient Portuguese archives 
in the Torre do Tombo. Again, it was not until the eighteenth 
century that Caetano de Sousa printed a document by which 
two years after that embassy, on June 7th, 1454, Afonso V 
conceded to the Order of Christ the spiritual jurisdiction of 
Nubia and Ethiopia. 

The policy of secrecy not only led to the suppression of 
historical works; nautical guides, maps, instructions to 
navigators and their reports suffered the same fate. 

In the Cortes of 1481 the representatives of the Third 
Kstate petitioned King John II not to allow foreigners to 
establish themselves in his dominions, adding that, as regards 
Florentines and Genoese, they had brought no profit, but 
on the contrary had found out secrets about Mina,! and the 
islands. They spoke more truly than they could have known, 
for it is probable that it was during his residence in Portugal 
that Columbus obtained the information which enabled him 
to find his new islands in the West. ' 

Though the traditional view of Henry’s designs and 
achievements as set out here has been subscribed to by most 
modern scholars, two, Payne and Vignaud, sought to minimize 
them. The former considered Henry as mainly an organiser of 
slave-raids and entirely misunderstood his character ; through 
ignorance of Portuguese psychology and history he committed 
himself to baseless statements and indulged in unworthy 
ironical remarks. His distorted picture? will unfortunately 
be read by hundreds for one who can find time to go to the 
sources and learn the true facts. 

Vignaud was better informed, more sober and _ less 
prejudiced than Payne, and he offered more solid arguments 
in support of his case ; influenced however by Zurara’s lack 
of precise statement, he contended that the Prince never 
aimed at reaching the East Indies, but only endeavoured 
to open up relations with Prester John. Now though Goes, 
who has been quoted earlier, wrote nearly a century after 
Henry’s death, D. Manoel I made an assertion similar to 

1 The fort of Sao Jorge da Mina, the centre of Portuguese power 


and commerce on the Guinea coast, the modern Elmina. 
4 Cambridge Modern History, vol. i, pp. 10-11. 


THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 215 


that of the historian in the letters patent whereby the title 
of Admiral was granted to Vasco da Gama on January 
10th, 1502; the King there said that his uncle began to 
discover Guinea with the purpose and will to find India by 
that coast.t As Dr. Cortesio remarks, the designation of 
‘‘ India’? in a grant to the finder of the way thither, made 
only four years after the great voyage, cannot refer to the 
realm of Prester John. Besides this, actual contemporary 
evidence of Henry’s intentions has been preserved. In 
cap. 16 of the Chronicle of Guinea Zurara reports the Prince 
as saying that he wished to get knowledge of the Indies as 
distinct from Abyssinia, and this was as early as 1442. 
Account must also be taken of the Papal Bulls; in one of 
January 8th, 1454, Pope Nicholas V bore witness to Henry’s 
desire to make the ocean navigable as far as the Indians 
““who are said to worship the name of Christ ”’ (i.e. the 
so-called ‘‘ St. Thomas’s Christians ”’ of the Malabar Coast), 
while Pope Calixtus III in March, 1456, conceded to the Order 
of Christ spiritual jurisdiction in all the lands to be acquired 
by the Portuguese explorers beyond Cape Non, throughout 
all Guinea and beyond that Southern region ‘‘ as far as the 
Indians’”’. In these “Indians” Vignaud merely saw 
Abyssinians, but he found himself unable to explain away 
the reference in cap. 16. In his voyage of 1456 Diogo 
Gomes had orders to reach India, if possible, and took an 
interpreter for use if he arrived there. By India Vignaud 
understood Abyssinia, but he made no reference to Esmeraldo 
where Duarte Pacheco describes the difference of opinion 
as to whether the voyages should be made down the coast, 
or across the ocean as a nearer way, until ‘‘ some land of 
India was found’. At the time this was written, India 
certainly meant what it does to us. Moreover, Barros 
reports that when Bartholomew Dias returned from his 
discovery of the Cape, King John II named the latter Good 
Hope ‘‘ for the promise it gave of the finding of India, so 
desired and for so many years sought after”’. 

If contemporary chronicles are not more outspoken 


1 Alguns Documentos, p. 127. 

2 « He not only desired to have knowledge of that land, but also of 
the Indies and of the land of Prester John, if he could.”’ 

3 Ibid., bk, iii, cap. 4. 


216 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


regarding Henry’s ultimate purpose, the reason lies to a 
great extent in the fear of arousing the jealousy and opposition 
of other powers, of Castile and especially of Venice, which 
controlled the lucrative trade between Europe and Asia. 
In any case, Zurara could hardly be expected to dilate on a 
point which had small importance when he wrote, since 
India was still a far off goal. 


INDEX 


Abyssinia, see Ethiopia ; histories of, 
see Almeida, Tellez 

Adam of Bremen, 7, 81, 110, 121 

Adamnan, 60 f. 

Africa, Central, explored, 90, 100; 
East, ancient knowledge of, 22 ; 
Cosmas’ knowledge of, 36; West, 
Castilians on, 211, 212; charts 
of, 207; Portuguese voyages to, 
204-8, 210; Ptolemy’s know- 
ledge of, 22; voyage to, 204 

Africa, Africanus’ description of, 170 ; 
European travellers to, in Middle 
Ages, 167, 168; Jews in, 170, 
171; Malfante’s description of, 
170; maps of, 203; Moslem 
toleration of Christianity in, 
168 ; travellers’ tales of, 166 

Africanus, John Leo, 170 

Agathemerus, Geographical treatise 
of, 26 

Agricola, conquest of Britain by, 20 

Ailly, Cardinal Pierre d’, cosmogony 
of, 13-15 ; debt of to Bacon, 18; 
debt of to Ptolemy, 14, 17; 
influence of on Columbus, 15, 17 

Albertus Magnus, cosmogony of, 10 

Alcacgovas, Treaty of, 212 

Alexandria, 3, 4, 33, 61, 137 

Almalik, mission station at, 145 

Almeida, history of Abyssinia by, 
183, 188-92 

al Muqaddasi, journeys of, 96 

Alvarez, 183 

America, discovery of by Vikings, 81 

Antichthones, 7 

Antipodes, discussed by Bede, 6; 
discussed by Lambert, 8, 9; 
discussed by Dante, 9; dis- 
cussed by Albertus Magnus, 11 ; 
discussed by Roger Bacon, 11, 12 

Antonine itinerary, 27, 28, 52-60, 64 

Arab coins in Sweden, 82 

Arab Empire, culture of, 88, 89; 
extent of, 88, 89, 113; geo- 
graphical literature of, 91, 96-8 ; 


population of, 89; postal 
system of, 91 

Arabian amber, 94; astronomical 
tables, 11; authors, 13; geo- 
graphy, 24; merchants, 110, 
117; pilgrimages, 91; thought, 
2, 3, 18, 89 


Arabia, 14, 21, 33, 35, 100 
Arculf, Bishop, 60-66 
Aristotle, 14, 15, 17 


Atlas of Medieval Geography, 109 

Atias Mountains, 20; caravans 
from, 168 

Audomarensis, L., Liber Floridus of, 


Autun, Honorius of, 162 


Bacon, Roger, 3, 10-13, 18 

Baghdad, 109, 125, 127, 133, 137 

Baltic, amber route from, 20; 
German merchants on, 105; 
Mohammedan trade with, 94 

Banks, see Vivaldi 

Basil, St.,°24—5 

Battatah, Ibn, 90, 99-100, 135 (note), 
14] 

Beazley, Professor C. R., quoted, 50-3, 
90,00, 105, 116" 1535. 156 

Beatus, maps, 5 

Beauvais, Vincent of, 160 

Bede, The Venerable, 2, 5-7, 18, 37, 
69, 72, 165 

Benjamin of Tudela, 105 

Bjorké, 73, 83 

Black Death reaches Europe, 143 

Black Sea, 10, 125, 137 ; Swedes on, 
82; trade on, 142; trade 
ruined by Turks, 171 

Blanquerna, 168 


Bojador, Cape of, gone to sail 
beyond, 210; reached by 
Portuguese, 199; rounded by 


Portuguese, 205 
Bokhara, 132, 142 
Bolgar, 111, 122 
Boshiislan, 83 
Brahmins, early age of, 27 
Brazil, discovery of, 208, 
Portuguese claims to, 
Terra da Santa Cruz, 209 
Breviarius, 50-2 


209; 
209 ; 


Cabrul, Alvarez, 209 

Canaries, allotted to Castile, 212; 
Castilian claims to, 210-11; 
dispute over, 211; granted to 
Luis de la Cerda, 197 ; Normans 
in, 210; Portuguese claims to, 
197; Portuguese voyages to, 
196 

Carolingian Empire, fall of, 74; 
overthrows Frisian Empire, 72 

Caspian Sea, shape of, 24; trade on, 
111, 138; Vikings on, 83 

Castile, 11; claims to Canaries, 


218 
210-12; jealousy of Portugal, 
216; trade on West African 
coast, 212 


Cathay, 16, 127, 144; missionaries 
in, 147; prices in, 145; road to 
from Tana, 144; routes to, see 
Trade Routes 

Cerda, Luis de la, 197, 210 

Ceuta, 90, 199, 204 

Ceylon, 26, 34-5, 125 

Church, Nestorian, 89, 127, 130, 138, 
147, 182; Roman, attitude of 
towards geography, 24, 26-7; 
ban on trading with infidels, 
137; exploring spirit of, 145; 
rivalry with Greek Church, 105-6 

China, 66, 89, 92, 125; centre. of 
civilization, 124; Christians in, 
182; geography of, 21, 35; 
Ming dynasty, 152 ; missionaries 
in, 147-9; Tartars in, 126-52, 
157 ; trade in by Mohammedans, 
95; trade in, in silks, 143-4; 
visited by Battitah, 90, 100-3 ; 
visited by Marignolli, 151; 
visited by Marco Polo, 134-5; 
visited by Pordenone, 149 

Circular Route, 109; analysed, 114; 
attempted by Apostle Andrew, 
109; / eastern “part of, 110; 
limitation of area of trade on, 
116; political adjustments on, 
112; subsidiary routes of, 112; 
Cipangu, 16 

Clavijo, 153 

Columbus, Bartholomew, 15 

Columbus, Christopher, 4, 15, 17, 
154; geographical theories of, 
15-16, 165; learns Portuguese 
secrets, (214; medieval in 
thought, 18; plans in third 
voyages, 209; preceded by 
Norsemen, 81; three voyages of, 
16 

Columbus, Ferdinand, 163 

Conches, William de, 6 

Congo, discovered, 208 

Constantinople, 33, 57, 65, 69, 100, 
119, 122, 132, 136; route from, to 
Gothland, 109; trade in, 110, 
125; trade route from to West 
Europe, 113; trade with Russia, 
114-16; Vikings in, 75-6, 82, 
110 

Cortesio, Dr. Jaime, 210 

Cosmas Indicopleustes, 34, 44, 164 

Cosmogony, Hebrew, 1-2; Bede’s, 


5-6, 11-12; de Conches’, 6; 
Magnus’, 10-11 ; Bacon's, 
11-12; Mandeville’s, 12-13; 


D’Ailly’s, 13-15; St. Basil’s, 25 


INDEX 


Covilham, Pedro de, 194 
Cremona, Bartholomew of, 131 
Crimea, 100, 142 

Crusades, 2, 99, 180 


search for North-West 
209; tribute to, 


Danes, 
Passage by, 
81 


Daniel, Abbot of Kiev, 104 

Dante, 9 

David, St., Pilgrimage of, 40-3 

Dawn of modern geography; see 
Beazley 

Delhi, Sultan of, 80 

Denmark ; see Vikings 

Diaz, Bartholemew, 208, 215 

Diaz, Dinis, 206 

Dicuil, 37, 38 


Earth, shape of, according to Beatus 
map, 5; according to Bede, 
5-6 ; according to Cosmas, 34; 
according to Mandeville, 12; 
accepted as round, 7-9, 12; 
in fifth century, 25; in Middle 
Ages, 4; scholastic conceptions 
of, 12; T.O. shape, 10 

East, Far, described by Ptolemy, 
21; routes to, 33, 142; severed 
from Europe, 154; Middle, 
trade routes to, 23-4, 33 

Eastway, 110 

Egypt, 26, 88, 91, 141, 166 ; route to 
East, 137; route to Ethiopia, 
180 ; schemes against, 138, 139, 
141; trade tolls in, 137 

England, embassy to and from 
Tartars, 139; Viking settle- 
ments in, 74, 84 

Eric the Red, 79 

Etheria, Abbess, 31-2, 44 seq., 52 

Ethiopia, 10, 20, 22, 32-4; 
Christianity in, 185; embassies 
from to Europe, 193, 204; 
Emperor of, 183-4, see Prester 
John; first allusion to king of, 
179; friars in, 192; histories 
of, 183, 187, 188, 194; jurisdic- 
tion over, to Order of Christ, 
214; name of Prester John in, 
187 ; one of Three Indies, 178; 
Prince Henry’s knowledge of, 
203-4, 215 ; Portuguese missions 
to, 194; position of during 
Crusades, 180; trade of, 35 

Europe, Eastern, 105-6 ; ethnological 


settlement of, 105; modern, 
106 

Exploring expeditions, Italy to 
Baltic, 20; Mount Atlas, 20; 
Nile, 20 


INDEX 


Finland, 74 

Fountain of Eternal Youth, 164-5 

Freisingen, Otto of, Chronicle of, 174, 
178 

Friars, Dominican with Marco Polo, 
133; Dominican in Abyssinia, 
192-3 ; diplomatic missions of, 
127-9 ; Franciscan among 
‘lartars,. i272. Franciscan im 
China, 148, 151; Italian in 
BESte iy, cit india. 140) in 
Kinsai, 135; John Marignolli, 
151 ; John of Monte Corvo, 146 ; 


Jordanus, 140-1; in North 
Africa, 168 ; Odoric of 
Pordenone, 148-50; Pascal of 


Vittoria, 145; in Persia, 139; 
Pian de Carpine, 181 ; travelling, 
145 

Frisian Empire, decline of, 72, 74; 
extent of, 72-3; references to, 
72; trading routes of, 73 

Frisian towns, 105; fear of Tartars 
in, 127 

Fur trade, 94 


Gama, Vasco da, 154, 215 

Gambia, 207 

Ganges, 22 

Genoa, 109, 113, 122, 144, 170 

Genoese, on Black Sea, 142-3, 171; 
Bank on Malabar Coast, 140; 
on Caspian Sea, 138; employ 
Jews, 170; engage in Persian 
trade, 138; in Portugal, 214; 
in Sahara, 171; traveller to 
Abyssinia, 185 

German, merchants, 105; towns, 105 

Geography of d’Ailly, 13-15; Arab, 
89, 91, 96-8; attitude of Latin 
Church towards, 24; atlas of 
medieval, 109; Dawn of 
modern, see Beazley; East 
African; 225. of Far East, 21: 
epitome of treatises on, 300- 
500 a.p., 37 ; Greek treatises on, 


26 PCT es Row eo Te medieval, 
28-30; of Ptolemy, 3-14; 
research in, 89-90; retro- 


gression in, 23 ; slow advance of, 
121; textbooks in Middle Ages, 
36-8 ; treatises on altered by 
Latin Church, 26-7; West 
African, 22 

Ghazali, 93, 94 

Gille the Russian, 83 

Gobi Desert, 133 

Goes, Damiao de, 186-7, 213-14 

Golubinsky, Professor, 106-7 

Good Hope, Cape of, 215 

Gougaud, Dom., 43 


219 


Greek science, 2, 8; influence of on 
Arabs, 88-9 

Greenland, 79-80 

Guest houses, 56, 60 


Guinea (Ghana), 169-70, 212; 
allotted to Portugal, 212; 
Castilian. “tlaims “to, 4-210: 


chronicle of, 200, 203, 212-13, 
215; heard of by Prince Henry, 
199 ; jurisdictionin, 215 ; object 
of Prince Henry’s voyages, 202 ; 
regarded as step to India, 215 ; 
voyages to, 204, 205-8 


Haddeby-Slesvik, 83 

Hardrada, Harold, 7, 75, 81 

Harek of Thjotta, 77-8 

Harold, Fairhair, 72, 78 

Hebrews, 1, 11 

Helleland, 80 

Henry, the Navigator, 163, 173, 198 ; 
aims of, 202-3; character of, 
200-2 ; in Ceuta, 199; described 
by Payne, 214; described by 
Vignaud, 214-15; early life of, 
198-200; fame of, 207; fore- 
runners of, 204 ; naval activities 
of, 199; plans of for North- 
West Passage, 209; relations 
of with Ethiopia, 203-4 ; expedi- 
tions sent to Guinea by, 204-8 

Hercules, Pillars of, 10, 89 

Herodotus, 24, 40, 203 

Heyd, W., 106-7, 140 

Hippalus, 21 

Hispaniola, 16 

Holy Sepulchre, 46, 48, 58, 61-3, 68, 
104 

Honorius, 36 

Hospes, see Guest-house 

Humboldt, 13, 18 


Iceland, constitution of, 79; trade 
of, 84-5; Vikings in, 78-80 
India, 14, 17, 21, 35, 66, 90, 92, 94, 
100, 125; centre of Eastern 
civilization, 124 ; descriptions of, 
140, 141; inhabitants of in 
Portugal, 203; jurisdiction in, 
215; Mandeville’s description 
of, 161-2, 166; meaning of, 
34, 178, 215; no mention of in 


Treaty of Alcacovas, 212; 
reached by Portuguese, 208 ; 
Red Sea route to, 194; route 


to, 137, 202-3, 209, 215; route 
thence to China, 141; trade with, 
124-5, 139-40; three Indies, 
178 ; visited by Meropius, 32-3 ; 
wealth of, 176 

India, Lesser, see Ethiopia 


220 


Indian Ocean, 21-2 

Indians, Red, 16 

Indies, West, 16 

Treland, 74, 85, 86 

Islam, 89, 90, 
Muhammadan 

Islands—Antilia, 162; Brasil, 162 ; 
St. Brandan’s, 162-3; of the 
Seven Cities, 162-3 

Italian towns, 105, 106 

Itinerary of Antoninus, 52-60, 64; 
Arculf, 61-6; Bordeaux 
Pilgrim, 39 ; Etheria, 31-2, 44; 
Willibald, 66-9. 

Isidore of Seville, 37 

Invention of the Cross, 46 


125 te onsee 


Jerusalem, Church of Holy 
Sepulchre in, 46, 58, 61-3, 68, 
104; Conquest of by Saladin, 99; 
described by Antoninus, 52-5, 
64 ; described by Arculf, 61-3 ; 
described in Breviarius, 50-1 ; 
described by Etheria, 31, 45-6 ; 
described by St. David, 40, 43 ; 
described by Theodosius, 48— 
50; -farer, 76; Mosque of 
Omar at, 66; Navel of the 
World, 55, 56, 63; Visited by 
Philippus, 179 

Jesuits, 183, 188 

Jews, 105-6, 170--1. 

Jordanus, 140-1 

Jubayr, Ibn, 98-9 


Khan, Arghun, of Persia—-Nestorian 


wife of, 138; Latin powers 
treat with, 138-9 
Khan, Great, capital of,” 126’: 


court of, 150; embassy from, 
129, 151; embassies to, 132, 
151; meets John of Monte 
Corvino, 150; missions to, 
128-9, 132-3, 138, 181 ; pleased 
with choir, 147; question of 
conversion of, 127, 130, 138; 
referred to by Columbus, 16 

Khan Kublai, 132-4, 157 

Khan Ogodai, 180 

Khanates, 126, 154 

Kiev, 110-11, 115, 119, 122, 128 

Kinsai, 134-5 

Kaut,-71, 76+7 


Labrador, 80 

Lambertus Audomarensis, 8, 9 
Lapland, 74 

Leif the Lucky, 80 

Liber Floridus, 8; Glossarum, 37 
Libya, 166 

Lima, Dom Rodrigo de, 194 


INDEX 


Lira, Nicholas of, 17 

Lobo, Father, 183 
Longjumeau, Andrew of, 129 
London, 72 

Louis, St., 128-9 

Lully, Raymond, 168-9 


Macrolinus, 5 

Malabar, 100-1, 140-1 

Malaya, 21, 92 

Malfante, F., 171-3 

Mandeville’s Travels, 12, 159; 
author of, 160; description of 
Terrestrial Paradise, 164-5; 
extracts from, 12, 161-2, 167 


Maps, Africa, 203; Atlas of 
Medieval geography, 109; 
D’Ailly, 14; Carignano’s, of 


Sahara, 169; Circular route, 
109 seg. ; Development of, 12 ; 
Jewish, of Africa, 170; 
Lambert’s, 8, 9; Laurentian 
Portolano, 197, 203 ; Medicean 
Portolano, 208 ; Mercator’s, 4; 
of Mythical Islands, 162; 
Peutinger Table, 24, 28; 
Ptolemy’s, 3; sent to Emperor 
Julian, 29; showing Prester 
John’s kingdom, 193 ; 
Ortelius’, 4 ;° States and travels 
of the Norsemen, 109; T.O., 
10; Turin, 7 ; of West Africa, 207 

Marcellinus, Amm., 28 

Marcianus, 24-5. 

Marinus of Tyre, 24, 36 

Marignolli, John of, 151 

Markland, 80 

Marquardt, 105 

Mauretania, 166-7 

Mecca, 91, 98—100 

Mediterranean, 10, 80, 113, 125; 
adjective first used, 26; Arab 
influence on, 88, 113; circular 
route on, 109 

Mercator, Gerhard, 4 

Merchants, among Tartars, 131-2 ; 
Egyptian, 172; Genoese, 143, 
170-3; German, 105; hand- 
book of, 143-6; in East 
Africa, 22; in India, 139-40 ; 
in Timur’s Empire, 153; 
Italian, 125, 132, 138, 143-4; 
Jewish in Africa, 170-1; 
lexicon of, 146 ; Muhammadan, 
90, 92-4 

Mesopotamia, 45, 88, 92 

Middle Ages, articles of trade in, 94 ; 
commerce of, 136; confused 
character of, 107 ; cosmogony 
of, 4-19; divisions of, 1-3; 
geographical text-books of, 


INDEX 


36-8 ; meaning of, 20; 
Muhammadans in, 90; most 
pPopmar/sbook? of, 12:* St. 


Isidore in, 37 ; sea captains of, 
96; universal principles of, 
106; writers of, 44 

Missions in Abyssinia, 183, 194; 
am China,..147) 151::,in india, 
140; in Kiev, 111; in Persia, 
139; Jesuit, 183; Portuguese, 
194; stations, 145 

Missions, Diplomatic, 105 

Missionary journeys, 32-3, 
147 

Mongols, see Tartars 

Monte Corvino, John of, 146-8,150-1 

Moors, 169-70 

Morocco, 88, 92, 94, 168 

Morris, William, 71, 77 

Muhammadans, Brotherhood of, 
89, 90; conquests of, 66; 
by Tartars, 127; conversion 
of Tartars by, 152; culture of, 
106; Merchants of, 90, 92-4 ; 
in Sicily, 99; pilgrimages of, 
91, 98; toleration by, 168 

Mugqaddasi, al, 96-7 


130, 


Negroes, 172 

Nestor, chronicle of, 106—7 

Nestorian Christians, 89, 127, 130, 
138, 147, 182 

Newfoundland, 80 

Niger, 100, 170; 
Nile, 172 

Nile, confused with Niger, 172; 
exploration of, 20; sources of, 
36, 193; trade on, 36, 169 

Norway, see Vikings 

Novgorod, 109, 111-12, 114, 118, 
122 


confused with 


Ohthere, 74, 119-20 
Oat... 77 

Olaf Tryggvason, 76 
Ormuz, port for India, 137 
Orosius, 26, 37 

Ortelius, A., 4 

Oualata, 169 
d’Outremuse, J., 160 


Paez, 183, 191-2 

Paulinus, 8, 20 

Papacy, 106 

Paris, Matthew, 127, 155 
Pegolotti, handbook of, 143-6 
Peking, Archbishop of, 146, 152; 


closed to Europeans, 153; 
described, 149-50 ; Great 
Khan’s palace in, 134; silk 


trade of, 143 


221 
Peutinger Table, 27-8 
Pesagno, Manoel, 196 
Persia? (21,1925) 100; e125 5"a 32: 


antechamber to East, 137, 139 ; 
becomes Muhammadan, 139; 
Khan of, 138; missions in, 
139';, Roman route’ to, .23 ; 
route through, to India closed, 
152)" Tartans sin 29 e157 
trade through, to India, 138 ; 
trade route, 137; trade, 138 

Persian Gulf, 24, 34, 125, 133 

Philippus, Dr., 179 

Pirenne, Professor, 113 

Pian de Carpine (Carpin), 128; 
Ambassador from Pope _ to 
Great Khan, 181; in Mande- 
ville’s Tales, 160 

Pilgrimages, Antoninus’, 27-8, 52- 
60; Arculf’s, 60-6; Bishop 
Willibald’s, 66-9; Bordeaux 
Pilgrim’s, 39; Daniel’s, 104; 
St. David’s, 40-3; Etheria’s, 
31-2, 44-8, 52; Ethiopian, 
193; Muhammadan, 91, 98; 
motives of, 43-4; Russian, 
104; checked by Islam, 66 

Pisa, 125 

Pliny, 20, 36, 44; 
14, 17, 160 

Polar discoveries, 81 

Polo, Maffeo, 32 ; route of, to China, 


views cited, 


132; return of, 136; second 
journey of, 133 

Polo; \Marco;\-16,.. 2l). 87,133; 
employed by Kublai Khan, 
133-4; reports by, 136-8; 
return of, 136; travels of, 
134, 135. 


Polo, Niccolo, 132-3, 136 

Pope, authority of, over new lands, 
197; embassy to and from 
Kublai Khan, 130; embassy 
toy Great Khan, 14],0 151% 
embassy to Prester John, 179 ; 
failure to settle Canaries 
dispute, 211-12; grant of 
Canaries, 197, 210; grants of 
exclusive rights to Portuguese, 
210; line of demarcation by, 
208 

Pordenone, Oderic of, 137, 141, 148, 
182, 192; quoted in Mande- 
ville, 160; route of, to China, 
148 

Portugal, 16, 88, 170 

Portuguese, attack by, on Tangier, 
211s circeumnavigation of 
Africa, 193; claims to Brazil, 
208, 209; claims to Canaries, 
197, 210*12; concealment of 


222 


discoveries, 210, 212-14; 
development of sea power, 198 ; 
early maritime history, 195-6 ; 
expedition to North-West 
Passage, 209; obtain North 
Africa and Guinea, 212; ocean 
exploration, 4; relations with 
Abyssinia, 193-4; slavery, 
206-7; views on Prester John, 
185-7 ; voyages to Canaries, 
196; voyages on West Africa 
coast, 199, 204-8; voyages 
of Atlantic discovery, 208 

Poseidonios, 25 

Powell, Professor F. York, 71 

Prester John, associated with Nile 
sources, 193; called Emperor 
of Ethiopia, 183 ; embassies to, 
193; European conception of, 
185-6; Forged letter of, 
174-8; Freisingen Chronicle 
mentions, 174, 178 ; legends of, 


127, 2 148.5% letter: ito,.; from 
Alexander III, 179; Mission 
to find, 180, 194; Marco 


Polo’s version of, 182; origin 
of name of,” 187 —92 ; 
Pordenone’s version of, 182; 
Portuguese missions to, 186; 
sought by Prince Henry, 203, 
214; sought for in Central 
Africa, 182; theories on, 184-5; 
true accounts of, 193 
Ptolemy, on Africa, East, 21; West, 
22; on Caspian Sea, 24; 
on Far East, 21; knowledge 
forgotten, 36, 38; quoted by 
D’Ailly, 14, 17; quoted by 
Marcianus, 25; on South of 
Tripoli, 22; translated into 
Arabic, 89; works, 3-4, 14, 17 


Quilon, 140-1 


Rabban Bar Sauma, 138-9 

Red Sea, 35, 166; Muhammadan 
trade on, 95; route to India, 
194 

River routes, 113 

Ronciere, C. de la, 168, 171 

Rubruck, William of, 129, 181 

Russia, conquered by Tartars, 126; 
Swedes in, 75, 82; Vikings in, 
75, 81 

Russian Church, 106; Chronicle, 
109 ; empire, 75; pilgrimages, 
104-5; plains, routes across, 
109-10 ; Prince, description of, 
111,115; trade, 111, 113, 142; 
trade with Constantinople, 
114-116 


INDEX 


Sahara, 100, 168; description of, 
by Lully, 169; lands beyond, 
170; map of, 169; trade with 
Guinea, 203; travel in, 171, 
206, 207 

Saladin, 99 

Samarcand, bishop of, 177; coins 
of, in Scandinavia, 83; golden 
journey to, 142 

Santarem, Visconde de, 6 

Scandinavia, see Viking 

Schiltberger, Reisebuch of, 153 

Seneca, 14, 17 

Senegal, 170, 199 

Serquis, 130 

Seven Cities, Isle of, 163 

Ships, 77-8 

Shipbuilding, Frisian, 72 ; 
141; Viking, 72, 76-8 

Sicily, 99 

Sidonius, C. S. Appolinaris, 29 

Sierra Leone, 207 


Junks, 


Sigilmessa, caravans from, 168; 
Genoese merchants in, 170; 
merchandise of, 169 

Silvius, Aeneas, 15 

Skiringssalr, 83 

Slave-trade, Kaffa, 142; Portu- 


guese, 206-7; Viking, 84, 110 

Slavs, 27 Rh 

Solinus, 4, 26, 44, 160 

Spain, 14-17, 23, 66, 92, 94, 109, 
153; see Castile 

Spruner and Menke, 109 

St. Brandan, Isle of, 162 

Sudan, 90, 92; caravans from 
Morocco to, 168 

Sumatra, 12 

Swedes, in Constantinople, 82; in 
Russia. 75, (820. 11020120 
journeys of, 81-2; trade of, 
81-3, 112; see Vikings 

Syria, 92, 100 


Tabriz (Tauris), 137-8 

Tangier, 90, 100 

Tartars, centre of government of, 
126; civilization of, 156-7; 
conquest of China, 126; con- 
quests of China, effects of, 
145; conquests of China, 
extent of, 126; conquests of 
Russia, 126-7; embassies to, 
128-32, 181; fall of, in China, 
152; fall of, in Persia, 152; 
historicalimportance of, 154-7 ; 
influence of, on Caliphate, 
127 ; influence of, on Western 
trade, 136-7, 142, 180; 
Khanates of, 126; as Moslems, 
152; suggested Christianity 


INDEX | 


of, 127, 129, 136; toleration 
by, 127; Western ideas of 
conquest of, 127 

Tashkurgan, 125 

Tauris, see Tabriz 

Teliez, 183, 187-8 

Terra da Santa Cruz, 209 

Terrestrial Paradise, 8, 163-6 

Theodosius, 47-50, 57 

Thorne, Robert, 209 

Thule, 6, 15 

Timur, 153 

Tiphilis (Tiflis), 33-4 

Topography of Holy Land, 47 

Tordesillas, treaty of, 209 

Trade, African, 171-3, 176; Arab, 
on Volga, 111; articles of, 94, 
108, 135, 142; blocked by 
Turks, 125; in Crimea, 142; 
on Eastway, 110; with Far 
East, 124; identified with 
booty and tribute, 112, 117- 
120; Jewish, 170; Muham- 
madan, 92, 94; opened by 
Tartars, 125-6, 136; Red Sea, 


95; at Termini of Circular 
Route, 125; in Viking Age, 
83, 84; (see separate towns 


and countries) 
Trade agreements, 120-1 
Trade centres, 120-1 
Trade routes, 
Scandinavia — Russia, 
caravan, 142, 153, 
circular, 109-112; Chinese, 
133, 136-7, 141, 142, 145; 
Far East, 33, 113, 120-1, 125, 
153, 154; Middle East, 23-4 ; 
Eastern seaway, 112; Frisian, 
73, 87; goods brought by, 
110-16; legends of, 121; of 
Northmen, 109; Roman, 108 ; 
safety of, 145; silk, 132, 143; 
value of, see Pirenne; Volga, 
111 
Travellers Tales, 39, 159; African, 
166; of Islands in Western 
Ocean, 162-3, 208; in 
Mandeville’s Travels, 160-1 ; 
Muhammadan, 102 ; of 
Terrestrial Paradise, 163; of 
Prester John, 174, 178 


Byzantine— 
OO 
168 ; 


Travels, Frankish, 182; Mande- 
ville’s, 12, 159-65, 167; of 
al-Muqaddasi, 96-7; under 


Timur, 153 
Tribes, Jewish, 11 
Tribute, 117-20 


Tristam, Nuno, 206 
Tudela, 165 

Turin Map, 7 

Turkistan, 92 

Turks, 34, 125, 171, 182 


‘Umar, 93 
Upsala, 83 
Ural Mountains, 74 


Varangian guard, 75; trade, 109, 
118, 120; see Vikings 

Venice, 75, 109, 113, 122, 125, 132, 
134, 136, 142, 144, 170, 193, 216 

Verde, Cape, 22 ; Islands, 207, 209 ; 
rounded by Diaz, 206 

Vigfusson, 71 

Vignaud, Henri, 214, 215 


Vikings, Adam of Bremen’s 
description of, 7; in Con- 
stantinople, 75, 110; coinage 


of, 84; culture of, 85; early 
travels of, 2; evolution of, 
into traders, 117; in Green- 
land, 80; in Iceland, 78, 79 ; 
misconception of age of, 70; 
popularizing of literature, 70, 
71; raids of, 71, 74; in Sicily, 
99; trade of, 83, 84, 114; 
trade centres of, 83; trade 
routes of, 109; in Vinland, 80, 
81; zenith of, 106 

Vinland, Vikings in, 80-1 

Visby, 83 

Viadimir, 106-7 

Volga, 100, 113, 116, 128-9, 131-2 

Vivaldi, Bank in Gujerat, 140; 
Bank in Malabar, 140 


Western Continent, 80-1, 209 

Western Ocean, 162-4; Portuguese 
voyages in, 208 

White Sea, 74, 81 

Willibald, Bishop, 66-9 

Wulfstan, 74 


Yarkand, River, 125 
Yaqit, 98 
Yule, Sir H., 182, 184, 188 


Zaiton, Bishop of, 151; church in, 


Lae. 3513). described > Agr 
Genoese in, 152; Great port 
of, 135; Junks from, 141; 
Marco Polo leaves, 136; trade 
of, 135 

Zurara, 212-14, 216 ; cf. Chronicle 
of Guinea 


Printed in Great Britain by Stebhen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Hertford. 


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Travel and travellers of the Middle Ages 


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